** This book was provided to me by Random House Worlds in exchange for a fair and honest review **
I’m just going to cut to the chase, right off the bat, and say that this was a hard one to read that I almost DNF’d about a dozen times.
The premise was plenty intriguing. Five students from five different planes are invited to a semi-mysterious university (Strixhaven) to be given the opportunity widen their magical talents and interact with beings and cultures they have never seen before.
It ticks all the right boxes: fantasy, dark academia, magical beings, and intrigue.
The execution, however, falls pretty flat for the first 60% of the book. The world-building is rushed and uneven. In some cases we get beautiful descriptions of settings and structures; in other cases next to nothing. Character development is also uneven, and, in many cases, forced.
I felt like many of the storylines served no purpose in moving the story along, and, actually, muddied things quite a bit.
Once things ramped up, the rush to get to the end was very noticeable and not all that satisfactory.
Definitely worth skipping.