B. Justin Shier

For life of me, I could not read another word of this book. I seriously don't understand the rave reviews this book has gotten, but I have to emphatically disagree with them.

There are definitely editing errors that detract from the flow of the book, but that's the least of the problems.

The greatest problem is actually the characters - and when your whole book is centered around developing your two protagonists, that's a bit of a problem.

Dieter is a boy struggling to make it out of his crap town in Las Vegas and get a college. He has something called the Sight that allows him to be aware of things around him as well as see intent. When he makes it out, headed for a magic college, he meets the other protagonist... dun dun dun, the love interest.

Rei is probably one of the worst characters written in novel history. She's gorgeous, athletic, witty, smart, talks like she was born in Victoria, England, and is a vampire. Of course Dieter falls over her like a love-struck boy and there the two caricature of people go. I honestly don't see a flaw in either of them - and as characters, that makes them failed characters. When you write about perfect people, there's no room for them to grow or develop. It isn't a coming-of-age story anymore, it's a "let's put perfect people into situations and watch them get out of it with no problem". Their interactions are abnormal and not believable. He takes her odd quirks without blinking and they rapidly hit it off - which goes completely against the way their backgrounds would suggest. Unnatural - hurts the flow of the book.

It takes 25% of the book to even get to the girl and from there, I'm already rolling my eyes at how much the protagonist Dieter is up in his own head. The amount of action/dialogue is minimal, which is never a good recipe for balance or for story movement.

It aims to be a sort of Harry Potter story with the whole magic and college system, but ultimately fails to deliver any sense of wonder or interest of their world. I honestly don't care for the characters or the world. It bores me halfway to death.

One star because I dropped the book after the magic action started (and it didn't interest me). So perhaps it gets better. Perhaps. But I doubt it. I skimmed through about 200 pages and all of it looked rather mind-numbing.

I don't recommend this to anyone.… (meer)

For life of me, I could not read another word of this book. I seriously don't understand the rave reviews this book has gotten, but I have to emphatically disagree with them.

There are definitely editing errors that detract from the flow of the book, but that's the least of the problems.

The greatest problem is actually the characters - and when your whole book is centered around developing your two protagonists, that's a bit of a problem.

Dieter is a boy struggling to make it out of his crap town in Las Vegas and get a college. He has something called the Sight that allows him to be aware of things around him as well as see intent. When he makes it out, headed for a magic college, he meets the other protagonist... dun dun dun, the love interest.

Rei is probably one of the worst characters written in novel history. She's gorgeous, athletic, witty, smart, talks like she was born in Victoria, England, and is a vampire. Of course Dieter falls over her like a love-struck boy and there the two caricature of people go. I honestly don't see a flaw in either of them - and as characters, that makes them failed characters. When you write about perfect people, there's no room for them to grow or develop. It isn't a coming-of-age story anymore, it's a "let's put perfect people into situations and watch them get out of it with no problem". Their interactions are abnormal and not believable. He takes her odd quirks without blinking and they rapidly hit it off - which goes completely against the way their backgrounds would suggest. Unnatural - hurts the flow of the book.

It takes 25% of the book to even get to the girl and from there, I'm already rolling my eyes at how much the protagonist Dieter is up in his own head. The amount of action/dialogue is minimal, which is never a good recipe for balance or for story movement.

It aims to be a sort of Harry Potter story with the whole magic and college system, but ultimately fails to deliver any sense of wonder or interest of their world. I honestly don't care for the characters or the world. It bores me halfway to death.

One star because I dropped the book after the magic action started (and it didn't interest me). So perhaps it gets better. Perhaps. But I doubt it. I skimmed through about 200 pages and all of it looked rather mind-numbing.

I don't recommend this to anyone.… (meer)