Josh

I had a pretty good time with this book. I enjoyed the characters, the worldbuilding, and the magic system. El's sarcastic narration was especially enjoyable, as I've always been a sucker for witty banter and sarcasm.

I thought the premise was interesting, and the author did a good job explaining why anyone would willingly attend such a dangerous school. Combined with a magic system that has clear rules and enough depth to make the setting feel believable, which helped maintain tension throughout the story as the constant dangers of the Scholomance never felt far away.

While I wouldn't say the writing is particularly flashy, it does its job well and lets the characters and setting shine. All in all, it was an engaging read that consistently held my interest and that I moved through fairly quickly. It's an easy 4 reluctant doom mages out of 5 for me.

So why not 5? The biggest weakness to me in the book, is the diversity. It just feels more stated than realised. The cast is drawn from a wide range of backgrounds and we're frequently told where characters are from, but those different cultural backgrounds rarely seem to meaningfully influence how the characters think, act, or interact with one another. In most cases it just doesn't seem like something that genuinely shaped them. The only thing that did seem to hit that note, was whether they were from an enclave or not, but everything else felt somewhat cosmetic.

This isn't a book I'd say I enjoyed, because the subject matter makes that impossible for me. It's a book you definitely want to know the trigger warnings for, before picking it up. At any rate, reading it was at times disturbing, uncomfortable, frustrating, and disgusting. That discomfort though is also what gives the book impact. It immerses you in the perspective of someone being groomed, showing how deeply that experience shapes her understanding of herself well into adulthood.

Watching Vanessa wrestle with the realisation that what she thought was agency was actually manipulation and watching her struggle to stop blaming herself was unsettling, but also compelling. I think overall it offers an interesting perspective on the psychological aftermath of grooming. I do think it would have worked much better as a novella as during the College years it starts to feel a bit bogged down and repetitive.

Miller's writing is beautiful as expected and while I said this in the Song of Achilles review it bears repeating. It takes a special type of talent to take a story we know and tell it in a way that captivates. She has that talent in spades.

She takes some liberties of course, but in doing so Circe is given agency and becomes a multi-faceted character who questions, rages, sinks into despair, and builds herself anew across her immortal life. I daresay I even enjoyed it a bit more than Song of Achilles, though I hold both in high regard for different reasons.

King's talent for writing everyday life of a small town and populating it with interesting characters is on full display here. Granted there are times he goes into the small details that may not appeal to everyone, but for me as a non-visual reader he paints a picture that even I can see.

The atmosphere he builds while slowly increasing the tension is a great journey, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There were some elements I didn't think were particularly strong such as the romance Ben has and I thought there were a tad too many ‘random' characters. Overall though it's a great “modern” take on the vampire mythos.