In a world where magic exists, six of the finest young medians with untapped potential are scouted for a position to join the Alexandrian Society - but only 5 of them will remain at the end of the end, and an elimination round. Nico and Libby, friendly enemies in constant orbit around each other are talented physicists, capable of astounding bouts of physical magic, while Reina, a naturalist, controls the life force of everything surrounding her. Callum, a cold and calculating empath capable of ripping apart other's emotions, and Parisa, a telepath able to see the darkest secrets in a mind are terrifying on another level. And then there's Tristan, running from a violent upbringing, able to see things for what they truly are yet still in the dark to the true force of his own magic.

It was fun to finally pick up this hotly talked about book, and I really didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised by the draw of the story from the first few chapters, and I enjoyed how a glimpse of each character in the first part of the book really began to build up the story for the reader, and introduce the main players arranging themselves on the chess board of the society.

There is something very darkly sexy about this book, and while reading it I was always aware of this chemistry just simmering away beneath every page and words spoken between all the characters. I genuinely wondered at one point if I was being a bit of creep hoping some of them would hop into bed together, but then a threesome happened and I was happy and also satisfied that I was meant to be feeling all that chemistry. I like hos sexuality also feels to very fluid within the story as well, and no one character seems to fall in line with the straight and narrow. The book itself is all sorts of shades of grey, with the characters really thinking about life, the science behind it, what makes humans human, and the dimensions of the world itself - and through all of this the actions of the characters examine what makes people behave the way they do. Does ability determine your nature, or does nature determine ability?

There were definitely some speed bumps here for me as well. Unfortunately it was not a perfect read by any means. I did find myself just wanting more of well, everything. I felt like we giving a wishy washy way of understanding this world and the magic - they have magic, they can use it, and that's about that - whereas I would have liked to know more about there what and whys of how this all worked. The same with the society - it was just this figure up above for a lot of the time, and it was hard to know what was really going on most of the time.

While I enjoyed getting to know our characters with the separate POVs, I do also wonder if we really got to know them and I don't think we did. I felt like there was a space between the reader and the characters within the POVs - the only one I feel like we truly felt everything he was going through was Tristan and that's because from the start he was so troubled, and fragile and easily led by others (which was disappointing in its own way as I really felt like he was going to be a strong one!).

The pace of the book, and the timeline was also confusing. A whole year passed in this book, yet I can't tell what happened bar a few conversations, some sex scenes and a moment when time freezes. The timeline felt fast, but the pace of the book was slow. When I'm reading a book about magic, and anything revolving around magic lessons or education, I like to be there for it all. I want to see the curriculum, the book lists, the timetable - not glimpses here and there of a conversation within a lesson (though it's a stretch calling them lessons and the society feels more like PhD level where everyone just does their own research). The reader was never aware of the passing of time until it was dropped into a paragraph in the middle of a chapter that a couple of months had passed, and I'd feel confused and disappointed we didn't get to really see those months. Some of the moments in the POVs/chapters as well felt a bit scattered, and I think the book struggled to hold everything together exactly the way the author wanted. It felt a little like there were moments in the book that needed to be organised a little bit better, mapped out properly and controlled. I'm eager to see if this is better in book two.

The ending, while not really surprising to me, was definitely intriguing if not slightly rushed. I will pick up book two out of pure curiosity for what happens next.