I liked the dark academia vibes, the adult content, the big themes, the magic.

But I never really cared about any of the characters. Not much actually happens over the course of the book: it's lots of backstory and magic exposition and navel gazing. I never got a good sense of the magic world, all of the edges of the story felt fuzzy. The ending was a fun twist, but since you can't see it coming and it's so unbelievably wild, it feels like it's trying to make up for the flaws of the rest of the story, and it just doesn't.

I'll probably read the next one, but I'm not terribly excited about it.