So I have a lot of thoughts.

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. It reminded me a lot of the Percy Jackson books, but the writing could have used some improvement. This is a newer author though, and I’m excited to see more from her! She has an interesting and diverse background that she talks about in the author’s note, and those notes were the parts of the book I enjoyed most—the mythology (the staff was so cool!), the diversity of the cast, and the Chicago setting were all really neat.

I do wish that she’d developed some parts of the plot a bit more, especially Maya’s powers and the Lord of Shadows. A lot of scenes where Maya won felt too easy, and I think could have been done better.

Overall, though, this book is a warm and exciting tale of magic and thwarting evil bad guys to save the people you love—and the world. I loved the diversity, and would love to read more like this! The world needs these books.