I so wanted to like this from the sound of the blurb, but from reading the initial extract my expectations were lowered somewhat for the full story.
It had a lot of promise, but just didn't live up to it for me, felt too much like a knockoff of the Shadowhunters world, with the main protagonist more like Eleven from Stranger Things (her nose bleeds when she uses her powers).
The world being built didn't feel fleshed out enough for me, and the new terms introduced to us felt forced - like here's a word i made up and will use to mean something but even though i might have told you what it meant the first time it was then never explained again so parts of the story just made no sense to me as the word being used for the thing they were coming up against or item they were using had no imagery in my mind associated with it.
I was also disappointed with how little we were given into the schooling aspect of it, these children were learning about magic and fighting, yet it was given a line or two about that then they were sent out as fully fledged knights fighting these monsters like it was an every day thing. And how much of it fell on to the main twins to solve all the problems, the rest of the people in the world, who must have had years and years more experience seemed pretty useless.
There was a decent attempt to shoehorn in lessons on not judging people by their appearances, and people who are bullies may be suffering things themselves, and how to cope with being bullied.
I definitely will not be continuing with any more in this trilogy though as it was a stretch staying interested enough to finish this one, if it hadn't been a Readers First one i would have given up well before halfway as it didn't redeem itself by the end.
It had a lot of promise, but just didn't live up to it for me, felt too much like a knockoff of the Shadowhunters world, with the main protagonist more like Eleven from Stranger Things (her nose bleeds when she uses her powers).
The world being built didn't feel fleshed out enough for me, and the new terms introduced to us felt forced - like here's a word i made up and will use to mean something but even though i might have told you what it meant the first time it was then never explained again so parts of the story just made no sense to me as the word being used for the thing they were coming up against or item they were using had no imagery in my mind associated with it.
I was also disappointed with how little we were given into the schooling aspect of it, these children were learning about magic and fighting, yet it was given a line or two about that then they were sent out as fully fledged knights fighting these monsters like it was an every day thing. And how much of it fell on to the main twins to solve all the problems, the rest of the people in the world, who must have had years and years more experience seemed pretty useless.
There was a decent attempt to shoehorn in lessons on not judging people by their appearances, and people who are bullies may be suffering things themselves, and how to cope with being bullied.
I definitely will not be continuing with any more in this trilogy though as it was a stretch staying interested enough to finish this one, if it hadn't been a Readers First one i would have given up well before halfway as it didn't redeem itself by the end.