A Study in Aether

Technically it's 3-and-a-half, but Goodreads doesn't know how to play nicely.

CHARACTERS: Boom! Elizabeth is damn right awesome and yass!! Female character!!! Elizabeth comes so prepared I should ask her to summarise my college subjects. Wowee, Elizabeth figures things out so wonderfully I want to ask her to figure out why data is so expensive in South Africa (no really, tell me how much you guys have to pay for 1GB) and why the hell Donald Trump is still running, much less alive.
Received a copy of this eBook as a thank you for beta reading it. Then proceeded to promptly forget about it until I saw it a few days ago. Managed to find time amongst all my crying and stressing about college to read this.
One can never have enough Sherlock Holmes inspired books. I mean, sure, you can say no, but you know you'll be reading it.
Who stops while running from a murderer/downright weirdo to write down a few paragraphs of your thoughts? Unless she was using a text-to-speech app (if you have one that doesn't need constant data to work, please message me), which would actually prove to be harmful, as the weirdo can hear you and kill you. But I do like the fact that she's recording everything.
ACDH – I'll try not to call it ACDC
What kind of gym class do you have if they teach you archery? We had a basic of swimming and running (though sometime we did ‘rounders') and weird summery games (hoops, bok in die hok – a type of dodgeball – and in the winter, P.E/P.T was inside, and we mostly did Aerobics or something like that. I would have given my left arm to learn archery (though I'd probably hurt a few people in the process).
People in American get detentions for the weirdest things. I mean, what Cassy said wouldn't bet worth a detention in my high school (it's not even that bad, that's something I would tell my friend in the hallway even with teachers around me and they would probably just laugh.
If Elizabeth doesn't think the police chief doesn't have the skills, how would she have them? I mean, I'm sure people would raise an eyebrow if you buy the same equipment police stuff.
The writing is at times boring, but stilly good.
Elizabeth has a very good and realistic relationship with her father. It's actually interesting because if this book were a YA, you'd see a case of absent parents and odd relationships with the protagonist's parents. Perhaps it's changed because it's an MG novel? Or maybe it's just the author' doing? So well done on this. Half a star added for the whole parent-daughter relationship and it feeling real.
Professor Martin sighed. He looked like someone about to do something he knew he would hate. “The whole building is encased in a powerful lockdown spell. There's no way to get out without breaking through the spell and I need some time to sit and study it carefully. If I'm not careful, the person who put it there will know.” Seeing Elizabeth's mouth start to open, he cut her off, “I know you have questions; I talked to Albert, and we'll give you a history lesson after we get out of here. For now, let's get dessert and I'll do my best.”
: Oh yeah sure. Let's just go from not wanting to tell them things to let's just tell them everything. I'm sure if Professor Martin just said, “Some security problems” it would be okay, but let's go with it for plot and exposition.
So if the runes were enchantment runes and not locking runes, hence the reason why everyone's so calm, why is Elizabeth so against it and awake/aware? Did she not drink from the Kool-Aid as it passed through the crowd? Is she more aware of magic than others? And if she is, then why does she still ‘drink the Kool-Aid'?
Even though the action's good, there are times when there's a sentence of action and then that's it. Like a character does something that'll usually be an entire paragraph worth of imagery, is only one or two sentences. It's not much of an annoyance, but I'm pretty sure you want your readers to imagine a lot of the world.
So yes, this book is good. It's interesting and it's about magic and mystery and female characters doing things. Add it to your list for a good, quick read.