This book has great characters, witty dialogue, and some interesting concepts. There are few books that I have laughed as much at; the viewpoint character is great with sarcasm, even about herself, and honestly that really kept the book going for me. The idea of a bunch of mathematicians accidentally gaining power through their math is not new, but is done in an intriguing way here (and in a way that I'm pretty sure won't turn off non-mathematicians).

The thing I did NOT like about the book was that it became more unbelievable as it went on, in a bad way. The genre suddenly shifted, in a way that was too jarring for me to overlook. This made me sad, after such a great beginning. I really liked the characters, I especially liked the dialogue (and the internal monologue of the protagonist), but I just didn't like how the world developed. If it had started out like Harry Potter, it would have been fine (fantasy literature is great, in its place). But when you start out like Arthur C. Clarke (hardest of the hard SF) and then halfway through the story suddenly shifts to J. K. Rowling, that just doesn't work well (in my opinion).

I would still recommend this book, just because it is hilarious, and it was still enjoyable. ( )

A very interesting book - there were a lot of annoying parts, mostly having to do with standard relationship tropes, but there's also an excellent, very unusual magic system (applied topology?!). Also one ancient mage and one current mage, who's thoroughly nasty - interesting contrasts with the math magic. And a few idiots of various stripes - the one who got the ring then disappeared from the story, not sure if those things are related. And so on. There's a lot of things beginning here - I definitely want to read the next one! ( )