Summary:
The Alexandrian Society is the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation. Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori is a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali is a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious. Callum Nova- an empath who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality.
When the candidates are recruited by Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation. Five will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.
My rating: 3/5 stars
My review:
This book is mainly character-driven, which figures when there are 7 or 8 of them central to the story, but overall I'd expected more to happen. We spend a lot of time in the characters' unnecessary and irrelevant thoughts, which only help to flesh them out slightly, and not much else. Even after reading the whole book spanning a year, I barely feel like there's any story to it I could tell.
I liked the basic plot and the idea behind their world, but the narration bothered me at times. The author never seemed to get to the point and kept winding around one event, going deep into each character's feelings. At first, I enjoyed that style of writing because it connected us to the story and placed us firmly into their world. But that rambling way of narration continued well into the time I would have expected the plot to start. The pace of the story continued to be slow and after a point, I wasn't interested in knowing the character's thoughts so much as what was going on around them (which was nothing, but I would have liked for something to be going on).
The research and experiments they were conducting were pretty well-written. The author actually explained, for the most part, what Nico and Libby were working on, which was nice. The author did sometimes make them do impossible things and say it was because of magic, but there isn't a way to explain that anyway. Their discussions about time and using everyone's powers to manipulate it were intriguing, but I didn't get where most of their initial ideas came from. The lessons given to them weren't really shown, and it seemed as if they suddenly unlocked more powers just by being there.
Libby was extremely annoying, and while I knew that was the point, I still hated her. Nico was only slightly better. Come to think of it, I didn't really like any character, which just made the character-focusedness of the story even more irritating. I get that some aspects of their personalities were deliberately written as flaws, and I'm not saying I wanted all of them to be perfect and likeable. Still, I feel they should've had some redeeming quality that made us want to continue reading about them. I couldn't have cared less about who was eliminated and who got to stay.
I feel the need to explain why I'm giving this three stars, but I'm not sure of the reason either. Maybe I liked the complicated and confusing writing, and random pointless philosophical thoughts that got nowhere. They were fun to read, even if they added nothing to the plot. I've no idea what the characters even did for most of the book, and some of them felt overlooked (Reina) but I liked reading some parts just for the language.
I enjoyed both the initial part, when we were getting to know the characters, and the bit towards the end, when a bunch of things happened. There wasn't anything about the book that I particularly hated, but I was really bored while reading the middle section. If some parts of it could've been shortened or made more happening, I would have liked it more.
Their whole 'extreme determination to stay in the competition' thing didn't make much sense to me, and I feel the Alexandrian Society could've done with a little more context. They were said to have immense, world-altering power, but all the members did was sit around reading ancient manuscripts. The discoveries made by the initiates seemed like they could lead to something, but most of those plot points were dropped midway.
Again, there's nothing exactly bad about this book. It's written well, and the idea is engaging, but the characters and repetitiveness bored me. Certain developments did happen towards the end, and some of the character dynamics are interesting- though they didn't feel too intense or relevant- so maybe I will try the next book sometime.
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