Dhonielle Clayton's The Marvellers
Once again I am begging editors to take a firmer hand, because this book is OVERSTUFFED. Clayton clearly has so many details of this world in her head, but that doesn’t mean every single one of them has to appear in this first book! Anyway, this is the story of Ella, a girl from a family of Conjurers, a branch of magic developed by slaves and their descendants. Now she's the first Conjurer to be admitted to the fancy magic school (which apparently is for every other magical child in the world?), but of course she's faced with mean girls and cruel and prejudiced teachers. Then someone breaks out of wizard prison (there are also POV chapters from her viewpoint), Ella's favorite teacher goes missing, and more mayhem ensues. That’s not even getting into her roommate with a mysterious backstory (obvious to the reader), who does prophetic knitting (ok, AMAZING), and her other friend who can talk to animals and magical creatures and also has a slightly mysterious backstory. I wished that more time was spent on them hanging out and making friends instead of all these kind of disjointed chapters, and when the climax finally does come, it’s super quick and not really very interesting. I think this series has a lot of promise but this first one could have used some streamlining for sure. B+.
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