Synopsis (From Goodreads)
The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magical academicians, the best in the world. Their members are caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity. And those who earn a place among their number will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams. Each decade, the world’s six most uniquely talented magicians are selected for initiation – and here are the chosen few…
– Libby Rhodes and Nicolás Ferrer de Varona: inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds.
– Reina Mori: a naturalist who can speak the language of life itself.
– Parisa Kamali: a mind reader whose powers of seduction are unmatched.
– Tristan Caine: the son of a crime kingpin who can see the secrets of the universe.
– Callum Nova: an insanely rich pretty boy who could bring about the end of the world. He need only ask.
When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they must spend one year together to qualify for initiation. During this time, they will be permitted access to the Society’s archives and judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. If they can prove themselves to be the best, they will survive. Most of them.
My Review
3 out of 5 stars
This book mainly works well as a character-driven novel. The plot does sounds really cool, but it doesn’t resolve in a super interesting way. I thought all of the characters were introduced well, and each initially felt that they would be a distinctive voice from the others. There are six total main characters, and each chapter is told from one of the six’s point of view. I think it does alternate evenly between all six, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that way. The way each character is introduced is through them individually meeting Atlas and Atlas extending an invitation to join this elite magical society, though it’s a selective invitation in that they invite six but only choose five. You know that they’re all going to volunteer for this opportunity if you’ve read the synopsis, so it’s a bit of a slow start, but it was a good way to get to know all of these characters. After those first initial chapters though, it became evident that the author has clear favorite characters who are better developed and more important to the story. This is why I can’t say for sure if there was an actual even distribution between all of the POV chapters. I definitely started to loose interest in half of the characters, and two of them I couldn’t even really remember who was who (Tristan and Callum– I know that each had a distinct magical power, but I couldn’t remember which power went to which person). I definitely wish all POVs felt even and important to the story, but it doesn’t resolve that way. The book is a first in a series, so it’s possible that it will even out.
I also had some issues with the writing style. It was overwritten in my opinion. In one particular example, a character is having a phone conversation with her boyfriend, and instead of holding an active conversation with the boyfriend, it provides flashbacks of the day’s previous events that the character is thinking about when asked a question by her boyfriend, but by the end of it, she isn’t going to share since this magical society is secret. I would frequently forget that she was talking to him. Honestly I felt the boyfriend’s frustration in being left hanging from an actual response to his questions. The style does fairly well for creating a character-driven novel because it can focus on the characters’ internal thoughts and reactions, but I felt it was a little too much.
As for the plot, it sounds cool, but it isn’t really focused on action or learning or performing magic. It’s more centered around an aspect that is spoiled in the synopsis, and in the tagline for the book. I won’t say more than that, but the book doesn’t really sell the point or the atmosphere of becoming a member.
At the point, I’m unsure if I would continue on with the series. Again, I liked some of the characters (the ones that are well developed). I’m not the biggest fan of the writing style, and I’m unsure if the plot will get more interesting than what this was. I also thought the ending of this was predictable, at least in terms of the main point, but not necessarily all the nitty-gritty details. Left feeling lukewarm overall.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a free eARC via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
See this review on Goodreads and on Storygraph.
Mad Scibrarian 