(^^,)

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 aspire to be as witty and straightforward as that gargoyle.

I liked the book. It was a nice read and wasn't something I would have typically looked for, so forming the ideas and settings in my head was refreshing.

However, The book has me of two minds.

I found the start of the book to be a little slow - a gentle introduction on the current state of affairs, the mystery of the dreaming, the six Diviners. If you approach it from the view that the Cathedral and each other is all that they knew about since the start (and that this is a two-book series), then the world-building is easier to digest.

As soon as the characters leave the Cathedral and everything unravels, the book picks up in pace and they're jumping from area to area in order to complete their objectives. That speed unfortunately came with a slight lack of depth, though; I would have liked to know more about each area: how they came to be, why something is where it was. Naturally, once they were done with their objective in one area (and also because of time) they immediately moved on, which is fair, but they left me behind as well.

I'll admit - I wasn't expecting the ending. I should have, but I didn't.

All things aside, I have no complaints - only wishes. I'll have to see how the second book goes.