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unluckycat13's review against another edition
3.0
A fun book. Obvious at times, surprising at other times. The biggest issue for me is that you really are just spending a year with the main character in her magic escape. That can be cute and fun, but the result is that it takes a lot of time for the story to pick up. I could do without the reverence for rich men of industry who are uniquely talented and make society function, but I guess it's a common children's book trope.
No romance was an excellent aspect though, and the main character is a great female lead.
No romance was an excellent aspect though, and the main character is a great female lead.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol and Child abuse
Minor: Death and Child death
maeverose's review against another edition
2.5
Disclaimer: I am very much an adult and not the target audience
I wanted to read this after hearing someone talk about the third book being a response to jk rowling’s bigotry, and from people calling it a non-problematic version of harry potter. I expected something better… it felt like hp fanfiction at times, and this first book at least had some minor bigotry of it’s own. Not as bad as the hp books but still…
Here were all the harry potter similarities I noticed:
I wanted to read this after hearing someone talk about the third book being a response to jk rowling’s bigotry, and from people calling it a non-problematic version of harry potter. I expected something better… it felt like hp fanfiction at times, and this first book at least had some minor bigotry of it’s own. Not as bad as the hp books but still…
Here were all the harry potter similarities I noticed:
- Morrigan has an abusive family that doesn’t care about her
- Said abusive family gifted her a terrible christmas present once
- The over-the-top magical world vs the normie world
- Jupiter reminded me a lot of dumbledore if he were young
- The trials
- Very ron-like best friend
- Very draco-like antagonist
- The Halloween and Christmas celebrations
- villain who’s name scares people
- Disfigured (slightly) villain
- Villain who mysteriously disappeared due to being weakened by a fight
Villain who kindly waited until after the trials to make his move Shadowy creatures coming after Morrigan (even once while they were stopped on a train…)
It has the ’bitchy preppy girl rival who hates the female mc for literally no reason’ trope. It has the withholding of information from the mc for no real reason trope. I’m not sure how I feel about the only two Black characters (one with the last name ‘Blackburn’) initially being bullies (also for no reason), even if they did both come around in the end. It was just an odd choice. And the whole ‘Jack faking a disability’ thing was also odd. It obviously was kind of resolved in the end but the whole ‘faking a disability’ idea is a bit questionable. A lot of actual disabled people get accused of faking their disability for one reason or another and that being in the book the way that it was just rubs me the wrong way. This is very very minor but at one point a character says ‘he or she’ instead of ‘they’ and that will never not be annoying to me. I’m also left feeling like the world wasn’t explained very well. It’s probably explained more in later books, but I feel like the first book should give you a decent idea of the world and I still have a lot of questions.
I was bored and mildly annoyed the whole book pretty much. I wanted to read it in full so I could form a full opinion on it in comparison to harry potter, but I don’t know if it’s worth it to continue in the series just for that. This might’ve put me in a reading slump.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Xenophobia, Bullying, Animal death, and Deportation
Moderate: Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Body shaming, Death, Fatphobia, Gore, Medical content, Misogyny, Violence, and Pregnancy
Minor: Cannibalism, Fire/Fire injury, Ableism, and Blood
Eye trauma
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