Sorry, I could not finish either of these.
City of Dark Magic: A Novel
I had more fun reading about the Lobkowicz family and the Prague castles on Wikipedia than reading City of Dark Magic: A Novel. Nothing really wrong with the book, except there wasn’t much to it. The historical back story was interesting; the characters and their problems were not.
I got about half through, decided it was pretty boring and skipped to the end because I was curious about the senator and her role in the mix. Got the answer, closed the book. Yes, I am interested in Prague but not enough to read the rest of the novel.
The Rithmatist
For those who love Brandon Sanderson’s work, this will be heresy. But I have not yet found a book by him that caught my imagination and made me want to spend a couple of hours with it. Mistborn was OK, but I didn’t enjoy it enough to look for the sequels.
The Rithmatist is listed as a YA title and the main characters are teens. I found the book dull because the characters were not interesting.
The back story was intriguing. Why would a high class school spend so much time and energy educating Rithmatists when supposedly their creations did not affect the real world? Is the study only good for dueling or is there a practical use? Why is the North American continent a bunch of islands? How did the chalkings go wild?
This novel didn’t get to these questions. Instead it was true to the YA market and focused on Joel and his desire to be a Rithmatist. Some days a good coming-of-age story hits the spot, but not today.
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