YMMV / Amulet

• Accidental Aesop: Villains in Amulet tend to believe in sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good, which is not untrue in itself but the belief is twisted as such to the degree that being bad means being ruthless in sacrificing things and becoming aggressive when it comes to achieving goals — which happens to Emily, especially as the series continue and her determined nature grows, hence her fall in Firelight. Thus meaning a person must be restrained when it comes to certain situations and capable of compromise when needed, just not of morals.
• Adorkable: When Trellis isn't brooding or in the midst of a serious situation, his underdeveloped social skills make him dorky and cute. Book 6, for example, has him smugly declaring that Luger will lose at Othello, only for the latter to turn the tides with one move, to his disbelief. Other examples are his genuine confusion about Earth customs as introduced to him by Emily. Another is when he awkwardly handles fans gushing over him, even good-naturedly indulging a kid for autographs despite his discomfort.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Emily and her motives. Is she truly selfless, working for the sake of Alledia and her family? Or is she is operating on self-centered motivations, just staying to achieve the power to turn back time and get her father back?
• Anticlimax Boss: The Elf King, in spite of being set up as the Big Bad, ends up being easily killed by Emily. Ultimately, Ikol is much more important than The Elf King.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • After having spent the entire series brooding due to her father's death and having just learnt at the end of the previous book what exactly caused him to die, Emily gets over it rather quickly after having a pep talk about it with Moze in "Supernova".
  • Trellis despaired for a couple of panels when he finally knew what happened to his mother in Supernova, but it wasn't addressed at all after that scene and he seems mostly unaffected by it after leaving the memory.
  • Navin is briefly shown to be affected just like Emily on losing his dad in Book 5, but other than that it's never been touched upon. Not only that, he doesn't show more than slight distress when he sees his fellow pilots die in front of him, some of which are his age.
• Ass Pull: How does Emily escape the Void in "Supernova"? Her future self and her son show up out of nowhere to help her escape to an exit portal, despite the fact that the previous books have established multiple times that you can only escape the Void by dispersing yourself into light and that the Void cannot actually be used for time travel. Trellis, who she had told to find her as she was about to be taken into the Void, also has little to no involvement in her escape.
• Base-Breaking Character: Emily. On one hand, you get people finding her inspiring because of her strength and the fact that she subverts many female protagonist tropes. On the other hand, some feel that she hasn't received nearly enough character development outside of subverting those tropes and is flat as a result, as her personality as the stoic loner has been mostly static since the first book.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Trellis's face introduction in The Stonekeeper has him biting into a slug — mouth opened wide into physically implausible degrees with layers of teeth — and this never happens again, nor touched upon.
• Broken Aesop: The series has an aesop about not handling your problems alone. But, and despite her claiming that she wouldn't fall into this mindset, even by the penultimate volume Emily still handles most of her issues entirely on her own. Especially in Supernova, this aesop is heavily undermined in that the other person helping her the entire time there is her future self. Emily doing things by herself actually helps resolve the plot of Supernova in another sense too, as she breaks free from the void once she completely rejects a partnership with Ikol, making her almost entirely self-sufficient for the finale.
• Broken Base: Supernova. There are a lot of good reviews about it, praising its exciting storyline and amazing art. However there are some, especially longtime fans, who are deeply disappointed and confused at the direction the series is going, since it's nearing its end.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: it's not exactly hard to foresee that the real villain in The Last Council was Max.
  • Ever since his introduction, he already has a smug smirk going on.
  • And not to mention, he frequently uses flattery and is treated as an underdog by everyone.
  • He's afraid of confronting the other stonekeepers, but when he blew away those grouls, he pulled off a bigger attack than anything Emily has ever produced.
• Cliché Storm: You have the rebellious scarred prince who wishes to overthrow his father and is morally ambiguous, the Chosen One who is spoken of in a prophecy (two counts of them with both Navin and Emily,) a magical MacGuffin that is more dangerous than it seems at first, the grumpy but honest and hardworking member of the team in Cogsley, a floating city in the sky with a dark secret, and these are just a few examples. While the writing of the story can leave much to be desired, the writing in everything else, the art, and the ubiquitous Nightmare Fuel combined still manage to hold up, however.
• Designated Hero: Some feel Emily and Navin are these, with some:
  • For one, Emily rarely does anything heroic and the reasoning behind her actions sounds less because she wants to do good but more like she simply has no other choice. It also doesn't help that she's rarely nice and warm to other, especially ruthless towards her enemies and is not above using force and violence against her allies, proven they stand in her way. She also doesn't exhibit any sort of leadership qualities, and can be quite arrogant, and although she does care for other people and believes in the value of teamwork, she still steadfastedly works alone.
  • Ever since the Resistance claim that Navin is a commander and a leader, he doesn't possess leadership qualities himself, and always defer to someone else when there's leading needed to be done. He also has little development at all because the lack of a concrete personal goal or character flaws.
• Fandom Rivalry: A mild one with fans of Bone
• Foe Yay Shipping: There was a considerable amount of fans who ship Max and Emily, disregarding the fact that Max is an adult who appears youthful due to the Voice and Emily is very much a minor.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The car accident that killed David is made a lot worse when it's revealed in Book 7 that the whole incident was caused by someone trying to commit suicide.
  • Trellis getting a well-deserved punch in the face in book 2 is less cathartic and more sickening when you finally learn his backstory.
• He's Just Hiding: Most fans towards Gabilan, as it's never explicitly shown that he died.
• Idiot Ball:
  • Vigo, for a senior stonekeeper, and Emily, who has a pretty solid successful streak so far, holds this, compiling allthree stonekeepers in one airship with NO weapons meaning if said airship is destroyed because it can't defend itself fron hostiles, then whatever powerful allies the Cielan Army have are dead. Lampshaded by Max.
  • Also, when Vigo attracts the attention of Max in order to save Navin and Aly, Emily and Vigo both attacks him at the same time, with utterdisregard to the potential damage it will cause to the airship, who are holding Enzo, Rico, and Luger overboard, and failed to consider the possibility of ALL of them falling to their deaths. It was lucky that Trellis managed to think up of something to bother saving them too and Enzo has the foresight to install another engine. For two characters who established themselves as the Guardian Council, this is breathtakingly stupid.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Although many fans are disappointed by Supernova, many has desire to finish the series for coming this far, or at least know what happens to fan favorites.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Max happily destroying an entire frigate full of people, onscreen, whereas before his slaughter of innocents was at least only implied.
  • When the full extent of Ikol's or rather the Voice's machinations are revealed, it's shown that he manipulated countless stonekeepers into mindlessly or voluntarily helping him to their deaths, while keeping others imprisoned in the void, all while making them commit genocide on their own people. Him getting just a slap on the wrist from Emily seems a little too light a resolution to his subplot for some readers.
• Narm: When Silas finally dies, while it does make sense in context, what is intended to be a somber moment is made a little comical by the lights going out, complete with By the Lights of Their Eyes.
• Nightmare Retardant: After all of the Nightmare Fuel in Firelight from Emily's transformation into a firebird, Emily turns out to be autonomous still, and she is freed by her older self time-travelling from the future. Many fans think this made Emily's plot in Firelight much less impactful in hindsight.
• Questionable Casting: Willow and Jaden Smith were announced to play Emily and Navin for a film adaptation of the books, which appears to have halted in development.

• Shipping: There's some fans of the series who ship Emily and Prince Trellis ("Tremily"). It helps that, although Trellis looks much older, Word of God has him being close to her own age at 14 (and later 16.)

• Stoic Woobie: Trellis ever since Book 1, though the audience doesn't learn the full extent of it until later. When he was young, he was scarred, mind-wiped, and enslaved to a mind-controlling parasite by his own father for finding out the truth about the Voices, and the only people who ever cared about him were either killed, like Virgil, or used against him, like Luger. He then grew up under a cold and clearly emotionally abusive father, during war times, and was treated like crap even by his own people by the time he became a teenager. Things only get worse for him for a while after defecting from his father, until he becomes friends with Emily at least until he watches her break down and lose control of her stone while he's helpless to stop it... and yet, Trellis has rarely ever broken down or even complained about this in any of his appearances, even after regaining his memories about his youth.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: New-timers just recently starting the series won't find the change from fantasy to sci-fi too jarring, but many of the older fans used to—and pulled in by—the fantasy genre are unhappy now that Kazu is changing it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • How some fans feel about Max. He makes a compelling villain with a sympathetic backstory and reasonings, and along with his badass powers and incredible efficiency in handing the protagonists' butts to them at every encounter, him receiving a very sudden death because he gave up and because he's too powerful to be defeated by any means.
  • Emily, considering most of her characterisation has remained static and how little of her past is shown aside from the accident, vague motivations, and little personal connections to the villain.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There are fans who feel this way about Emily's escape from the Void and Stone's control in the eighth volume. The plot of Emily losing control of her power and becoming a monster was presented as a real threat since Volume 2, and her actually going over the edge in Volume 7 was presented as a Darkest Hour for the heroes. By comparison, Volume 8 has her break free of the stone's control about a third of the way in, and thanks to two new minor characters who are never seen again after (when up to that point it was presented as Trellis' responsibility to help her.) The rest of her plot is just her leaving the Void, which she achieves, again, thanks to completely new characters and plot elements that contradict previous volumes. Similarly, the emotional turmoil she experienced that led to this plot in the seventh volume (specifically her trauma over her past) was utterly glossed over in the next.
• Too Powerful to Live: Max. Goodness, whenever he shows up, the Guardian Council simply doesn't stand a chance against his wit and power, to the point that he actually has to dispose himself out of the plot.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The age demographic is 9-12 and Kazu intended it to be enjoyed by all age groups and at its core a children's story meant to be understood easily with the usual themes of adolescence. It also has the onscreen death of a parent, child abuse, war, opression, tyranny, racism, child soldiers, attempted assassination on children, attempted and successful murders, emotional and political manipulation, and genocide.