Benjamin Medrano

Has a good inciting incident that is then squandered.

For someone with a 24 month deadline, our MC is surprisingly chill about being several months being lost by the time we get to the academy. She's surprisingly unconcerned with time in general in fact. If there was any attempt to make it feel like she was trying desperately to save someone it failed. As far as I can tell she's just a girl with serious injuries attending magic school. Where's this drive our antagonist keeps referencing?

Also, her obsession with a girl who she's never even spoken to is creepy. The fact that the emotional catalyst of the opening scene is her worry over this girl and not, say, her parents (who it is made clear she loves) is quite bizarre. We don't even see her find their bodies, they just die off-screen and we're told to care. I mean one of them doesn't even makes an appearance in the story.

Further, I think the writing is getting worse. Ancient Dreams and Lilith's Shadow weren't great but the writing was at least tolerable. Here it feels like almost nothing but telling.
And the repetition, my gosh the repetition. She keeps giving the same information to different people.
Yes, technically they don't know that information, but the audience does and it gets old fast.

The atavism is never explored and given the status of this as a trilogy it seems like this is another Medrano setting I'm doomed to never get the chance to experience outside of a very narrow slice. So many interesting sounding places that there's no way we have the time to explore at the rate this story is progressing.

It's all very depressing.… (mehr)