I will rarely ever say this about a book, but I finished this book only so that I could write an honest review of it. This novel is completely horrid; it is unoriginal, redundant, and unpleasant to read. Emily, the protagonist, seems to hate life and has no reason for living, which makes it pretty hard to like her or empathize with her in any way. Even when something crazy starts happening to Emily, she merely thinks that she didn’t have much of a future anyway.
Constantly the new world Emily is drawn into is likened to computer and computer programming (binary). In order to explain all of the random bits that Emily seems to know, and to connect her and the computer analogies, we are told, not shown, that Emily is a “nerd” and that she sometimes plays Dungeons and Dragons, a cliche. The entire novel seems to have been written as a way for the author to complain about everything he dislikes, stating more than once how stupid cheerleaders are, and how there are bullies everywhere.
Emily, when brought to a new world, both wants to copyright her “inventions” but also intends to introduce things as if they were created by her, such as bras and typewriters. The school Nuttall “invented” is very similar to Hogwarts, having moving staircases and classrooms, the same general classes, and a headmaster who lets Emily (think Emily= female Harry Potter for this novel) get away with nearly killing a princess. The book had some original notions, such as the school being set on top of a ley line, but overall there was too much borrowed from other stories to make this one stand alone.
If you want to read a book about going to a magical school, I highly recommend you can this and go find a copy of Harry Potter.
Christopher Nuttall has been planning sci-fi books since he learned to read. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Chris created an alternate history website and eventually graduated to writing full-sized novels. Studying history independently allowed him to develop worlds that hung together and provided a base for storytelling. After graduating from university, Chris started writing full-time. As an indie author, he has published eighteen novels and one novella (so far) through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
Professionally, he has published The Royal Sorceress, Bookworm, A Life Less Ordinary, Sufficiently Advanced Technology, The Royal Sorceress II: The Great Game and Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling with Elsewhen Press, and Schooled in Magic through Twilight Times Books.
As a matter of principle, all of Chris’s self-published Kindle books are DRM-free.
Chris has a blog where he published updates, snippets and world-building notes at http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/ and a website at http://www.chrishanger.net.
Chris is currently living in Malaysia with his partner, muse, and critic Aisha.