(^^,)
I'm glad they weren't bad.
It's a feel good, coming-of-age-but-already-of-age book that you would enjoy in a week - I certainly did. It has a nice mix of humour, British sarcasm, mysticism and growth.
It does have the usual tropes associated with placing fantasy in an unexpecting world: the friend who doesn't know, the hastily forged band of characters, the plot twist that completely wrecks the status quo. Tropes as they may be, I think they were portrayed and handled well.
There's a healthy balance of switching between the normal and the abnormal, with a dash of realism. It must have been exhausting to be unable to put your all into both your day and night jobs, in general - let alone while being tired.
The ending felt a little sped up compared to the rest of the book; I don't know if it's fantasy books in general but what I've been reading recently starts off quite slow and foundational, then events quickly become flash cards by the end. In this case, once I got to the last chapter, it became very "but then everything was okay in the end" and I think there may have been room to flesh out what happened in more detail. I was in no rush.
Overall, I liked it and I look forward to the second in the series.
I'm glad they weren't bad.
It's a feel good, coming-of-age-but-already-of-age book that you would enjoy in a week - I certainly did. It has a nice mix of humour, British sarcasm, mysticism and growth.
It does have the usual tropes associated with placing fantasy in an unexpecting world: the friend who doesn't know, the hastily forged band of characters, the plot twist that completely wrecks the status quo. Tropes as they may be, I think they were portrayed and handled well.
There's a healthy balance of switching between the normal and the abnormal, with a dash of realism. It must have been exhausting to be unable to put your all into both your day and night jobs, in general - let alone while being tired.
The ending felt a little sped up compared to the rest of the book; I don't know if it's fantasy books in general but what I've been reading recently starts off quite slow and foundational, then events quickly become flash cards by the end. In this case, once I got to the last chapter, it became very "but then everything was okay in the end" and I think there may have been room to flesh out what happened in more detail. I was in no rush.
Overall, I liked it and I look forward to the second in the series.