(I hate trying to rate books I'm not 100% sure about. I can see why other people would like this, and if I was the right audience why I might have liked this more, so that's why I gave it a 2.5/3 stars)

I found this book when I was searching through newly released fantasy novels trying to find comp titles for my future book. I loved how unique the premise was, and how this story would use magic in a totally new-to-me way. I couldn’t wait to explore these elements with our characters, even predicting in a reading vlog that this would end up being a five star read. Sadly, it didn’t quite hit that mark for me, and I even contemplated DNFing this novel towards the last 50 pages. Let’s find out why.

This story is set in a college campus, which is normally a positive point towards the story for me as a reader. I love fantastical academic books revolving around students, studies, and campus life in general. In this story there is a mix of mundane students who cannot do magic, and students who can. There are three types of magical students, and their distinction is important in the novel. The mages of the story can perform magic, but their magic produces a waste product called dross. If dross is left unchecked it can break on someone and cause them instant bad luck.

That alone was enough to hook me into the story. I’d never been invited into a world where magic created luck, good or bad, via waste or residue from spell work. I thought it was a fascinating premise, and I couldn’t wait to dive deeper and figure out how luck would play out in our character’s lives.

What I didn’t expect was that the approach to this waste would come in the form of scientific understanding, rather than a fantasy twist. I’m all about science fiction. I can get on board with characters in space or on other planets. I can look past them growing food and developing technology in ways I’ll never fully comprehend, as long as I can keep up with an entertaining plot and exciting characters, I can skim over the scientific parts of the story and still have a great time.

This story became all about the science of dross: what happened when it became inert, what happened when they changed its temperature, what happened if it interacted with other magical elements? Our characters at one point were literally in a lab running experiments on rats, talking about dross, matter, mass, weight, and temperature so much that the fantasy element of the novel barely existed anymore. 

The extent that science, and the scientific approach to magic, was woven into the novel made it a chore at times to read. I notoriously didn’t love science classes because I wasn’t good at them. Having to read about theory and experimentation in the middle of what I thought would be a story based around magic was not at all what I had signed up for.

Like I had mentioned earlier, I can normally get on board with science fiction if the characters and the plot are entertaining enough. This was not the case here. I checked out of the story, drowning under the science of it all and the bland character interactions. I kept reading just to get to the end, but no longer connected with the characters emotionally (if I ever truly had). I didn’t care when a main character turned out to be an obvious villain, or whether our main characters ended up together or both ended up dead. 

The only part of the story that made me emotional (major spoiler) was when the FMC’s dog was murdered to advance the plot. I really dislike when animals are injured or killed in stories just to advance a character arc or plot device, and this really frustrated me as the reader. At this point I was ready to call it quits.

I think overall this book would be received better if the reader has a passion for science and an appreciation for magic. I can see why this author is so beloved, and why people flock to their work. Unfortunately, this type of story just did not work for me and that’s okay. The more books I read to try and find comp titles, the more I’m learning about myself as a reader and writer. 

I can understand and appreciate the work this book did to develop the magic system in such a detail oriented and scientific way. I can appreciate that the author made it digestible even for someone like me who barely scraped by science classes in high school and college. And I can also appreciate that there is an audience for this type of story that just isn’t me.