James has managed to
get a scholarship for Oxford University. He expects challenges from academics,
from sports, from being a poor notherner in the elite college. He even could
handle a dangerous and unpleasant room mate
He did not expect
murder. He certainly didn’t expect witches, witch hunters and being in the
middle of an ancient war.
One of the hardest
kind of reviews to write is for a book that…. Isn’t terrible? Especially when
that kind of covers everything you need to say about it. Honestly I find
reviews like this are both harder to write than a review that condemns the
books very existence and an utter offense to the eyes of everyone who read it
and in some ways more damning. I mean, everyone can read my passionate loathing
for a book yet somehow it feels better than my… mild amusement?
But unfortunately
mild amusement is the best this book gets from me: I don’t dislike by any
means, I enjoyed it, it was an entertaining read, but there was nothing
especially unique or compelling about it that drew me in or made me want to
pick up the next book
Like the enemies -
they’re witches. I do appreciate that the book took steps to distance evil,
non-human witches and actual wiccans so we’re not demonising a whole religion,
so applause (I also like that secrecy in this case is maintained because past
witch hunts have shown what damage revelations can bring). But the book also
did very little to define what witches were other than “evil”. Inherently evil
- evil for being born, power hungry, ruthless and dangerous. It feels.. Cheap
to just decide “hey evil” especially when your antagonist is so very
near-human. This leads to things like the Council “binding” witches magic so
they can’t use power - does this happen every time or just witches who commit
crime? Is there any kind of nuance in terms of sentencing? Can witches be seen
as possibly innocent? Do all of them need binding? These are all elements that
aren’t explore and even james, as a man who chatters incessantly as he tells
us, fails to look at even remotely.
There’s also very
little exploration of magic beyond “it exists” and less real making magic an
actual appreciable of the story or the witch’s existence. You could, honestly
replace “witches” with vampires, demons or wereracoons and not appreciably
change the story. The actual nature of the bad guys is pretty much irrelevant,
they’re just a rather Generic Bad Thing to fight
