Review: Morally bankrupt schlock, but action packed.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2014
This author appears to have played too many video games where the objective is to shoot anything that moves.  Mercedes Lackey said that she did something like seventeen rewrites on her first big YA hit trilogy.  This series could use a lot of help.  The author does have potential, but there are many things that could be better.  Peter is supposedly a twelve year old boy who is completely totally sexually naive.  Hard to believe.  Through two books even.  Loses cuteness after first mention.Spoiler alert.First of all, I cannot see the target audience here.  If it is meant to be younger than YA like the Xanth books, Eddings, or Terry Brooks Shannara, then the male female role reversal is too subtle.  Also, if that is the target, then all the schoolgirl crush plots ad nauseum play more into teen than tween.The idea that not killing people is good, but slaughtering hundreds of animals, wolves bats or even bugs just because you want money is OK leaves me very cold.  The villains all seem. To be universally sadistic crazies, with no moremotivation than that.  Contrast this with Ilona Andrews oddly urbane and charming zealot Spider from the Edge series. The new queen cannot even clean up one school where she already knows the problems exist.  How can she rule a mega empire.  Her right hand mage hench person has no apparent reason to be loyal .  The arch villains never appear in the first two books.  The treatment of slavery is way too superficial.  Death threats lose value when over used.  Contrast F. M. Busby brutal spacer academy books.  The author set up to need twenty students to ally with Peter.  Way too many characters to handle.  All too interchangeable.  Problems pointed out in first chapter with power handling of two major characters still not ameliorated at all after two books. The magic was basic video game elemental; nothing nifty like Lyndon Hardy "Master of Five Magics" "Owl Service" by Garner, anything by Wrede or Wynne Jones or "Terrier" by Pierce.  Body jumping villain totally ripped off from L. K. Hamilton or Jordan.  The only reason I give this two stars instead of one is because I want to know where the heck the plotline is going.  These are such underdogs that I don't see how the author can pull it out. For this reason only, I will probably buy the third volume.  Also the proof reading was better than some.  If you want good underdog takes on Empire, stick with Luke Skywalker or Simon R. Green.  Two stars.