I often meet an opinion that, even though the trope where the heroine loses her powers generally sucks, Alina is an exception because, apparetly, it "suits" her.
I do not agree with it, but I guess, people sometimes have bizarre preferences. In the end of the day, if you want to use this trope, there is a much more important aspect to consider: whether or not it makes sense within the magic system of the story.
If you create a magic system, especially if you want to pretend it's science based and has actual rules, it's important to establish those rules and stick to them. And whether the magic can be obtained, lost, relinquished or transferred are very important boundaries to set up. Those are fundamental laws of your universe. You can argue about your characters' wants and need to the moon and back, but you can't selectively switch off gravity because it doesn't suit your character to land flat on their face.
"But it's faaaantasy, it has a defective farting mussel named Zoya dragons!" is a weak excuse, because while the rules of the fictional world might be different from the real world, they still have to be logical. It's impossible to take the story seriously if the logic is violated and abandoned every time you need something new to happen.
So, initially, Grisha magic seems to be innate. It can manifest itself at different ages, but you need to be born with it. There is no information about non-magical people being able to gain it either intentionally or after a stressful event, sickness, near-death experience or anything else. It's fair to assume it's genetic. Moreover, it appears to be so integral for all the body systems that a person suppressing it suffers from poor health, lack of appetite, constant tiredness and other symptoms similar to hormonal disbalance or vitamin deficiency.
There is no way one could lose such an essential part of their organism and survive without severe medical consequences. what makes even less sense that Alina's lost magic somehow gets transferred to other non-suspecting people as if it's not a genetic trait but a strain of chickenpox with the incubation period of 20 seconds. How does that work? Was their DNA rewritten? They suddenly grew a new organ?
If that's the case of overexertion from using three amplifiers or some sort of karmic punishment for "greed", then there should be precedents. You can't tell me there were no other Grisha who would try to bite more than they could chew. There should have been, and otkazats'ya bigots ,who never miss the chance to bitch about Grisha snobbery and corruption, would gloat about yet another Grisha who "succumbed to greed" and lost their powers for centuries. However, not only are there no precedents, we have the whole Morozova family and the pile of "saints" to prove that excessive, frivolous and extravagant use of magic does not, in fact, result in losing said magic.
No matter how much you believe that the ending suits Alina because "she's just a gurl who never wanted power uwu", there is no coherent way this would work in the magic system established by the story itself. not only does it not fit into the story, it becomes the last nail in the coffin of an already weak and flimsy magic system.
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
