Rating: 3 out of 5.

The Alexandrian Society is a secret society of magicians. Every ten years they pick six of the brightest magicians for initiation, but only five will be selected. The ones that are initiated with gain wealth, power and prestige. The first year is spent together where they are permitted to access the Society’s archives. At the end of the year, they will be judged on their contributions to arcane areas of knowledge and five initiates will be selected for admission.

I’m not sure how I feel about this YA Fantasy. I liked the premise and the magical dark academia aspect of the story, but it evolved too slowly for me. I listened to this book and think perhaps I should have read it instead. When the characters started talking about science theories my eyes started to cross because I just didn’t get it. Oftentimes it’s easy to understand things when I read them rather than hear them.

While there are six candidates vying for initiation into the Academy, the book seemed to focus on two characters, Libby and Nico, the most. The author went in-depth the most on their development, although none of the characters were fully fleshed out. Sad to say, I didn’t really like any of the characters, which made it hard to care what was going on. It seemed like there was a lot of talking and game-playing, but not much action. The book ended on a cliff-hanger, but I don’t think it was as shocking as the author perhaps intended.

I’m unsure if I’m invested enough in this book to read the second one. I doubt it….