Review: Starts out impressive, but fails to deliver.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 10, 2014
The very beginning and end were fast-paced, engaging, and fairly entertaining, while overall the book had extensive, if generic, magic systems and world-building going for it.Unfortunately, the book slows to a crawl for the majority of the telling. Much of it takes place in stationary settings where not much is going on and the main character is reflective or getting an info dump of some other character's backstory. The naive, angst-ridden protagonist makes many unintelligent choices that gets others hurt, is seemingly helpless for the entirety of the book and tends to deal with it by lashing out via numerous temper tantrums before having to be saved again and again.Despite that, the protagonist's voice was plucky and relatable, which made him easy to root for. Throughout the story, there are few likable side characters to latch on to while the one-dimensional bad guys pretty much just do bad things and then are rewarded for it--making it hard to understand their motivations or care about them at all.It's by no means a bad book in terms of writing. It just wasn't an enjoyable read for me. I believe this stems from having false expectations going in. From the sample, I thought I was going to get an action-packed adventure tale about a teenager thrust into the midst of a clandestine supernatural war while trying to find his place in a lethal new environment, and what I got instead was a fairly conventional teen sitting in a room all day. The press of danger was there, it just wasn't visible. The only time the pacing and action picked up was when they needed to run away again. The factions that were supposed to be taking part in the conflict were mentioned, but there really wasn't much exposure. I'm sure it will all be fleshed out later in the series, but as a single entity, it was disappointing and didn't fulfill the promises it made at the beginning.Finally, the book tries (at least if I'm reading the description right), to be young adult. While I'm sure it fits the dictionary definition of the term, it should be noted that there is only one actual teenager (who accomplishes very little), no romance to speak of (or romantic options that might create tension), and seems to be written more to impress parents or adults in general, featuring quite a few winks to the audience, as if to say knowingly, "kids, am I right?"