Posted by I received this as a review request by the author in exchange for an honest review. This book is very short clocking in at 138 pages, so this review isn’t going to be that long.
r/fantasy bingo:
- self published
- under 2500 ratings
- novel featuring the fae
Plot:
Molly is a normal teenage girl who’s recently moved to a new town. She goes to the address of her new school and is given a very strange course schedule, with classes like “supernatural training” listed as one of her periods. She thinks it must be a joke they play on new students, but she was told that it’s not at all a joke, and was then shown to the Supernatural Studies building. She later comes to find out that she’s the one who created all of this, and it’s her world to command. There are mermaids, werewolves, shapeshifters, goddesses etc.
Most of the book is the day to day lives of the kids at the school, most of them are trying to befriend Molly, they’re enamoured with her since she’s their creator and most of them scramble to be one of her friends.
Molly does manage to make some enemies though, and some of them want her dead.
Final Score: 7/15
Characters:
Molly is a pretty typical teen, she daydreams frequently, cares about her fashion, and likes her makeup. She has a good relationship with her mom, but her father passed away when she was young. She’s completely taken aback by her new supernatural world, but handles it well and falls into her role as ‘creator’ fairly quickly.
Death-tina is jealous of the goddess, Galaxy, and her position as the leader in the supernatural world. Galaxy is kind and caring, and Death-tina just thinks that power and strict adherence to the rules is what makes for a good leader.
After the first two characters were introduced I started losing track of who was who because each character was there and gone in an instant. There are 138 pages to this book, and over 20 characters, each character only got about 4-5 pages of their own before moving onto the next.
Final Score: 4/15
World Building:
I guess this would qualify as portal fantasy since there’s an entrance to a totally mythical world of her own creation. The ‘normal’ world she’s been living in is just a standard American town.
The world building was pretty loose since Molly is the creator of this world, whatever she wants to will into existence will pop into reality on her command. It’s vaguely explained that she has a magic book that allows all of this to happen.
There are zombies, vampires, werewolves, fairies, shape shifters, goddesses, demons, Death Gods, etc. Each one of them got their own character POV which was kind of interesting.
Final Score: 7/15
Writing:
This book was written in the second person some of the time, and the third person some of the time, and it wasn’t always a clear transition. Sometimes the tense would switch from past to present which was also fairly confusing.
There were numerous spelling errors, missing punctuation, misused words, overused words and other things that really hindered my reading. Misuse of they’re/their/there, or were/we’re, and then vs than really kept me from getting into the story.
Final Score: 1/15
Pacing:
Each new chapter started me over again with someone else, so it was jarring trying to get through the book. I didn’t know who any of them were before starting their chapters, which made it more difficult.
Final Score: 5.5/15
Originality:
I’ve read a lot of magic school books and a lot of portal fantasy with young kids being at the center of the story. I haven’t read many where the school they’re attending is of their own creation though.
Final Score: 7/15
Personal Enjoyment:
This book just wasn’t for me, at first I thought this was a YA story, a young girl going to a school and discovering that she’s magical – but then it started throwing around the word fuck in the middle of the book and I was at a loss as to who the audience was supposed to be.
Final Score: 3/10
Final Score: 35/100
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