I fell in love with the cover of this ARC. Once I read the description, I knew I had to give it a shot.

Read: April 29 – May 3, 2024

Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural
Audience: Young Adult
Book contains: betrayal, mentions of death

Purchase a copy from Amazon.ca

[I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.]

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Hard to Get Into

Sixteen-year-old Leo is an apprentice alchemist, but when the castle is attacked one night, he is forced to flee, and accidentally creates a portal to the realm of the fey. Together with Lady Lisandre, Leo learns that the Dark Alchemyst is threatening both worlds. Leo and Lisandre are joined by a witch named Flora and a warlock named Lucien to find the Talismans of Atlantica before they fall into the Dark Alchemyst’s hands.

I was excited to begin reading this book, though unfortunately it didn’t grab my attention as much as I’d hoped. I was distracted by the technical errors in the text, and by some confusing scene shifts, and also by the name “Vadjaya” which I’ve never seen or heard before.

This book is told in third person omniscient, which is a bit confusing at times since it does a lot of head-jumping (when the thoughts and perspectives of two or more separate characters are present in the same scene. Once I got over that, it was easy enough to understand. It’s told in past tense, like a lot of novels. It doesn’t run in a chronological fashion either, which caused a bit of confusion for me; I got lost a few times in the first half of the book.

It’s an ARC, so I downloaded the eBook and read along like I usually do using the Read Aloud function. Despite this, I wasn’t very motivated to read after the first 20 pages.

The reason for this was because I didn’t really connect with the characters. I couldn’t find myself rooting for their success. We’re introduced to several sort-of main characters: Leo, an alchemist; Flora, a witch; Lisandre, a faerie; and Lucien, a warlock. A small problem can come from the fact that three of these characters’ names start with ‘L’, which has the potential for causing confusion to the reader (which happened to me at times).

Since I didn’t connect with the characters, it was even harder to connect to their relationships. However, I enjoyed the growing friendship and budding romance between Leo and Lisandre. I didn’t really understand what was going on between Flora and Lucien, but I suppose life is messy. Other than that, there were other superficial relationships that didn’t share the spotlight as much.

While the readability was great and the descriptions vivid and enjoyable, there were far too many grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes for this book to be ready for publication. I hope the author gets at least one more proofread before the official release.

The pacing, on the other hand, was great. Interesting things were happening all throughout, but there was still enough time given to scenes of important dialogue or character growth.

I recommend this book to lovers of alternative magical renaissance, though only after the distracting technical errors have been fixed. The story is quite interesting, and a good start to the series.

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