Magic

This is an ok story, with reasonably good flow. Unfortunately, I'd be reading along happily enough and then refocus on the idea that this is about a militaristic school in which princess cadets harness their compassion and courage into magical powers... and my mind would stop. Not my cup of tea. ( )

3.75 stars. Basically, an inverted Harry Potter series, with a male writer (masquerading behind two initials) writing about a female protagonist. Cadet 11/Evie/Nicolina is on a quest to train as a warrior princess to battle the war being waged by witches while boys are training to become knights to battle dragons. Under the tutelage of a fairy drill sergeant, the girls are taught skills with their primary one being compassion. The lead female characters are strong (Evie, Maggie, Basil) whereas many of the others are too one dimensional. Hopefully, Larson will develop them further in his next book, and the plot while action packed and full of interesting surprises, turns out to be sadly predictable in the end. ( )

FROM PUBLISHER: A girl from the forest arrives in a bustling kingdom with no name and no idea why she is there, only to find herself at the center of a world at war. She enlists at Pennyroyal Academy, where princesses and knights are trained to battle the two great menaces of the day: witches and dragons. There, given the name “Evie,” she must endure a harsh training regimen under the steel glare of her Fairy Drill sergeant, while also navigating an entirely new world of friends and enemies. As Evie learns what it truly means to be a princess, she realizes surprising things about herself and her family, about human compassion and inhuman cruelty. And with the witch forces moving nearer, she discovers that the war between princesses and witches is much more personal than she could ever have imagined.

I feel like this book was written specifically for me. The plot, the character, the DRAGONS. It's like everything I love and then it was a book.

But... the pacing was off. And that just really jilted me the wrong way, knocking off and ENTIRE star and a place on my favorites shelf. It seems like a year, or at least a school year should have passed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the plot suggested, a school year. but there was no changing of the seasons, and I felt like I was in the story for maybe a couple of weeks, not a whole school year. Yeah.

Also, I can't find it in myself to like Evie and Remington. I mean, their first couple of interactions were GREAT, particular when they met, I loved that. But as the story went I, you can literally feel the author struggling to find reasons to put them in the same room together and converse, and then he went and just gave up on finding legitimate reasons and just had Remington continually say "It's so hard to have a conversation in this place." Which got really old, really fast. ( )