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A review by asreadbykat
The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton
4.0
I was so excited to see this in the store. After years of Harry Potter being the main magic boarding school text, I wanted to see someone else's take on it -a take that wasn't white as snow. This is definitely not snow white. There are characters of every shade from a variety of backgrounds. Of the three primary characters we follow, only one of them is white, a welcome change from the usual media.
The author captured Ella Durand's trials as the first conjurer at A.T.I. so well; I found myself actually seething with anger at the prejudice and discrimination she faced throughout the book, realities that I've heard about from close friends. Any time the story focused on Ella and her feelings or her interactions with her classmates, family, or even teachers, the story gripped me and refused to let me go.
I also adored the world and the lore the author created. This is a world where those with magic truly created their own space. I was eager to learn more about the different abilities in this world, especially about Ella and her family's conjuring.
The biggest reason I didn't give this book a full 5 stars is because it felt like so much was going on, nothing was able to really sit.
In one book, the story had to introduce our heroine, introduce the world, introduce the school, detail Ella's problems, introduce the antagonist(s), detail Ella's life, and solve the first book's primary problems. That's a lot for a single volume, and given that a small chunk of the book are small pages of letters sent or news articles published, it all felt squashed in there. Because the world in this book is so different and so unique, even in the last third there were long sections detailing what was going on that was world-specific. Because of all these story plots, I felt like I didn't really get to see Ella actually MAKE her friends, or really grow until the end. I was also disappointed we didn't get to see too many of the classes, or explanations of them, because the school year kind of just went by with phrases like: "Two weeks passed" or "it was suddenly *this month*". Part of the thrill of this niche of stories are experiencing the classes and the actual school through the characters, and it felt like we didn't get to do that.
To be clear: none of these plot points were boring. I was drawn to each one of them, and I would have loved to see them expanded on.
All in all, I really enjoyed this novel, and I'm so excited for the second one with the hope that, now that the foundations of the world have been set, some more focus can be placed on the building relationships and the school itself.
Definitely recommend this!
The author captured Ella Durand's trials as the first conjurer at A.T.I. so well; I found myself actually seething with anger at the prejudice and discrimination she faced throughout the book, realities that I've heard about from close friends. Any time the story focused on Ella and her feelings or her interactions with her classmates, family, or even teachers, the story gripped me and refused to let me go.
I also adored the world and the lore the author created. This is a world where those with magic truly created their own space. I was eager to learn more about the different abilities in this world, especially about Ella and her family's conjuring.
The biggest reason I didn't give this book a full 5 stars is because it felt like so much was going on, nothing was able to really sit.
In one book, the story had to introduce our heroine, introduce the world, introduce the school, detail Ella's problems, introduce the antagonist(s), detail Ella's life, and solve the first book's primary problems. That's a lot for a single volume, and given that a small chunk of the book are small pages of letters sent or news articles published, it all felt squashed in there. Because the world in this book is so different and so unique, even in the last third there were long sections detailing what was going on that was world-specific. Because of all these story plots, I felt like I didn't really get to see Ella actually MAKE her friends, or really grow until the end. I was also disappointed we didn't get to see too many of the classes, or explanations of them, because the school year kind of just went by with phrases like: "Two weeks passed" or "it was suddenly *this month*". Part of the thrill of this niche of stories are experiencing the classes and the actual school through the characters, and it felt like we didn't get to do that.
To be clear: none of these plot points were boring. I was drawn to each one of them, and I would have loved to see them expanded on.
All in all, I really enjoyed this novel, and I'm so excited for the second one with the hope that, now that the foundations of the world have been set, some more focus can be placed on the building relationships and the school itself.
Definitely recommend this!