First you get into this sticky situation with your school enemy where you’re bound to him by a super illegal control spell you can’t tell anyone about, next thing you know, you’re traipsing around an enchanted forest together providing unintentional entertainment to eldritch monsters. Just how it goes.

I loved this, although this was SO not the book I expected from the blurb and the reviews. It’s pretty consistently billed as cozy fantasy, but I just… don’t see that? There are no usual markings of the subgenre here. The characters are not part of a tightly-knit community of any sort; they brush past a couple of such communities alongside their adventures and one of them hails from one, but the story is largely about the two of them going on a duo adventure. The word around them isn’t particularly kind; it’s actually constantly threatened, and the magic school, the high society, and the organization that combats the threats the world faces are all implied to be permeated with the kind of intrigue and politicking that often stands in the way of actually bettering things. The characters themself aren’t standing up to an unjust world with kindness and hope as their primary weapons; in fact, Leo, the MC, is downright nasty to people at the beginning, often being selfish, lashing out for reasons that seem overblown until you finally get to know him, completely disregarding the fact that other people have lives that don’t revolve around him while constantly withholding critical information that would help others help him, using people’s weaknesses against them just because he’s in a bad mood, etc, etc. Honestly, I was mainly invested in him in terms of, “how does this horrible spoiled rich bully make me buy into whatever sob story’s he’s undeniably hiding and, more importantly, becomes the kind of fictional person I don’t want to slap.” And like, yeah, cozies with unlikable protagonists exists—for example, in Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland that’s basically the whole point—but in those, other elements that make the story cozy fantasy are typically present.

What else… yes, the stakes are personal rather than world-sweeping, but they also get remarkably high late in the book, making me worry for the characters in ways cozy fantasy usually doesn’t make me. There are sweet, whimsical sections, like the one in the tower (gods, I *love* the whole part in the tower!), but whimsical doesn’t equal cozy. I guess there’s all the focus on the small-scale spells that are aimed at bettering the quality of life rather than making big sweeping changes, except that focus isn’t part of the main conflict or its resolution. So like, yet another thing that totally is a staple of cozy fantasy, but isn’t used in a way that would put the story into the subgenre for me.

All of the above, however, only counts as complaints in terms of the book and its marketing not matching for me. I do wish I didn’t go in expecting a cozy, but even though I did, I still liked the adventure, the whimsy, the character growth, the pretty and dangerous forest full of monsters with too many eyes / mouths for eyes / other delightful eldritch features, the learning to work together, the relationships shifts, the thoughtful handling of the rather problematic matter of the control spell (especially given what it’s made of), and did I mention the character growth? Now that I’ve finished the book, I no longer want to strangle Leo! He’s done it! He’s become a marginally better person! Yay!

Speaking of Leo, I really like what the author has done in terms of keeping secrets from the reader about the main characters while telling the story in that character’s first person POV. You can see Leo’s got issues from the get go, but since for the longest time he can’t even come close to touching the reason behind the issues, they almost look like different sort of issues altogether at the start. But that reason has been there all along, subtly coloring everything, so when the explanation finally came forth, it had the right “ah, yes, that makes sense, I’ve been starting to suspect something like that actually” flavor. 

I’m also a really big fan of the magic system here and all the subsystems that it consists of, especially the musical one. It’s just so cool. I would love to know more about the magic school and the society in general and dig into all the problems that make it tick. I want to meet Cassius again and see him have an exciting and fulfilling story of his own because he deserves better. I want Agnes to have more page time. Above all, of course, I want to see how Leo and Sebastian’s interactions progress, because a burn this slow has to pay off at some point, and also, I very much understand what happened there at the resolution and I want to know what it’s going to take for Leo to understand, too, or for Sebastian to tell him outright. Really, I want the next book NOW, what do you mean there’s not even a release date yet? Tragedy.

Speaking of that, there’s one flaw I can point out about the book that isn’t related to genre expectations: the book is so reliant on being the first in a series and getting to pick up plot threads later that it gets sloppy with the structure. For example, in the eyes of Leo’s family, he just up and leaves in the middle of a party he lowkey ruins, and he’s never heard from again until the very end of the book. The whole plot line is just left fully hanging, with no attempt to set up specific implications for later books, foreshadow specific types of conflict, etc. The author just sets up a bunch of conflicts and then does nothing whatsoever with them, although at the end the reunion with Agnes provides some golden opportunities for wrapping up these threads on the book level while setting them up for further development on the series level. Sadly, the author instead just does nothing.