This is not the kind of book I'd usually gravitate towards. When I picked it up (my library has a section called Lucky Day, where popular books are set out on a first-come-first-serve basis, no holds, no renewals) I planned on not liking it (but the Lucky Day made it risk free). It was on so many Best of 2022 lists, I felt like I got the vibe of the book and wouldn't like it. I knew it was about kids at school with magical powers and my spidey-senses screamed HARRY POTTER which is also not the kind of book I'd seek out (pre- or post- JK scandals).

Honestly, though, this book WAS for me! I love language. I love French, I wish I knew Latin, I wanted my first tattoo to be in Greek and the artist talked me out of it), I could see myself in a parallel universe at the Royal Institute of Translation. I loved all the author's footnotes. The story moved along and the characters developed somewhat. I found myself exasperated with the length (I feel like from like 75-90% could have been deleted or vastly condensed) but at the conclusion of the story, I was very invested with Robin's story and I cried. During the 'why didn't they delete this?' section, I kept trying to predict the ending and preparing myself to say, 'I KNEW I wouldn't like this,' but at the end, I felt  resolution and sadness, I understood what had happened, and why it had to happen that way. I was somehow satisfied! I think by virtue of it being fantasy, I thought it would be cheesy, full of plot holes or deus ex machina without properly solving the problem at hand, or dreadfully boring. I was wrong on all these counts. It wasn't as one-dimensional as I'd imagine HP to be, there were colonialism questions, history of English-deigned 'lesser' countries, what England gets from APAC, the middle east, the Caribbean, the institutionalized racism, higher education and the problems with making it too exclusive, woven together using so much language and classic world literature. I didn't think I was attached to the characters until the story starting wending them away from me. 

I know this writer wrote The Poppy Wars and based on this, I'd read that too. Also in the acknowledgements, she mentions a cafe in Oxford where the book was largely composed that I now want to visit. She appears to have studied languages (Chinese) so I felt like her world-building was really comprehensive and atmospheric.