Fairly typical YA fare. I read like 80 pages and got bored and then just flipped to the last 20 pages to see how it ended. The motivations of the mainFairly typical YA fare. I read like 80 pages and got bored and then just flipped to the last 20 pages to see how it ended. The motivations of the main characters weren't clear to me; they largely felt like cardboard caricatures. About ten pages after the main female character and the main male character met, I could tell that the author was setting up a bad YA romance plot between the two of them.
I didn't finish this book. I got to page 268/398 before I gave up. This book had such great potential, and I feel that it largely failed to live eitheI didn't finish this book. I got to page 268/398 before I gave up. This book had such great potential, and I feel that it largely failed to live either up to it or to its hype. The premise was intriguing: Four parallel Regency-era Londons. I imagined it to be an alternative history fantasy story, which pretty much sounds like the best book ever. Except it wasn't. The writing, while grammatically and mechanically excellent, lacked a certain magic, and completely failed to draw me into the story. The magic seemed arbitrary. I don't know why there were four Londons in particular, and after reading most of the book, I still don't know how the magic system worked. The characters were bland and uninteresting. Kell is from Red London, the good, happy London, where everyone has access to magic and everyone is happy and lives happily ever after. Kell, of course, isn't just a magician. He's an extra-super-special magician! One of only two left in the multiverse! And the other one is the villain! How original. And Lila isn't much better. She's a badass! With a mysterious-completely-guessable-past! And she's magic! Even though she's from the London that doesn't have magic! But she's actually an extra-special magician! Just like Kell! He's the super-wizard. She's an uninspiring Mary Sue. Both are completely uninteresting and difficult to read. And the two of them spend most of the book searching for/carrying around a stone, a MacGuffin whose import I still don't fully understand. It's apparently evil? And needs to be taken back to the evil London? Why exactly? I still don't know. And the characters do things because it's convenient for the plot, and not because it makes any particular sense. When Kell returns to his home London, he makes a big deal about how he can't go back home to his family because . . . no reason is ever given. And when his family finds him it's a huge problem. Again, no reason given for why he doesn't want to reunite with them. This is where I gave up reading, because I don't like reading about characters doing things that make no sense in context. Overall, the book was boring, uninteresting and difficult to read. I wouldn't particularly recommend this to anyone. ...more
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