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I wish I had something more interesting to say about this book, given the author's wild backstory and the admittedly very creative title. But this about met my expectations - solidly okay. It was reminiscent of Vita Nostra or The Will of the Many, a dark mystery situation set at a magic school.
The worldbuilding of the menhir, and some of the skin-crawling details of how it operates, were the strengths of this book. Many of the characters were archetypical, differentiated but not really distinguishing themselves in the wider genre. The magic was cool, but the book took a while to set up - the last half of this book was significantly better than the first half.
It's apparent that this was Pruitt's first novel. As a published scientist, he's a technically very capable writer, and there were several very witty, on the nose, and laugh-out-loud scenes in this book. I think there's hope for the next few novels in the series to be better, but for now I'd recommend this as a curiosity for magic school aficionados or those who come to it from Pruitt's backstory.
