SaJa H.

This is young adult novel, so don't expect any sex or many romantic moments.
However, closer to the end of the story, there were confessions and a few tender kisses.
I would recommend this for my 13-year olds (that's roughly the age of the characters, anyway) without hesitation.

The Academy in this book houses many professions: military, healing, magic, law... However, there is virtually no magic of any sort in this book, save for a couple of healing episodes.

Despite being true "young adult" novel, the book was pretty interesting to me and I really enjoyed the characters and the plot.

There are a few bumps in the writing style, but one that annoyed me most was the author's inability (or fear) to use pronouns. "Sentinel trainee" or "mage trainee" started to drive me (excuse my language) nuts by the end of the book.

3.75 stars… (mais)

A pretty cute book. It was entertaining and everything. The characters were great. I loved Gib and wanted to hug him a lot. His friends were great too and I loved feisty Kezra an impossible amount.

The writing was good though I really hate when authors use descriptors to refer to people too much so that annoyed me, but other than that the world was adequately built and the plot was pretty interesting.

I felt kinda voyeuristic observing the love between a thirteen and fifteen year-old. Maybe it felt so strange because literally no one acted like they were younger than 16. I mean, there's quite a bit of maturity that the death of your parents and running a farm at 13 can bring you but everyone else acted that way as well? There was maybe one person and a baby who acted appropriately aged out of the children. So the romance felt really cute but then I remembered that this kid is literally 13 and I didn't know what to do with myself, especially since this book definitely isn't for middle-schoolers. I kept expecting years to pass, but then they didn't. Oh well.

Anyway, the book was pretty good and if you can get by stuff like I just said, then go for it.… (mais)

This is a nice little book, aimed I guess at pre-teens or young teenagers, with a gay 13-year-old main character and a mediaevalesque fantasy setting.

It did strike me as a very naïve book. The feudal society depicted is somehow undergoing dramatic social changes, such that women can go to school and become warriors (even against the wishes of their fathers) now, and in many contexts such as those Gibben Nemesio experiences, commoners can be treated the same as the noble-born. Despite being a poor and initially illiterate peasant, he makes friends entirely with high-born people, including a prince! With a little bit of sociological knowledge it's hard to see how such social changes could be occurring without the very foundations of feudalism being shaken, even a little bit. It's like if a reformist decided that never mind capitalism, feudalism was fundamentally an okay system that just needed a few reforms to make it "fairer". It's still a nice, feel-good kind of book, but it's not very realistic in that way.

Also, I felt a bit too old to read about a 13-year-old boy's first boyfriend. It didn't help that they were really melodramatic about it all, either.(Apr 2015)… (mais)

I'm a little unsure of how to rate this book. On the one hand, the authors are incredibly talented. Their story flowed well,the writing style was fluid, and the dialogue sounded like real dialogue verses some authors who can't quite make their characters sound like people. The characters were interesting (although the antagonists were somewhat flat), the main character was likable and developed, and the love story was adorable. I finished this book in a very short time because I found myself engrossed in the plot and wanting to know what happens, especially towards the end when the plot was rolling along great. I definitely wasn't disappointed about this being a good lgbt+ read. And I'll say it again: the love story was adorable. Gib was adorable. I love it when the main character is that likable!

But there were a few things about the story that bugged me: namely, the characters' ages. I'm not sure why the authors decided to make them so young when this didn't really feel necessary for the plot and at one point it had me skeeved out to the point of being unsure if I wanted to continue the book. Spoiler time: namely when the characters go to a tavern and the main character is encouraged to sleep with a prostitute. He's *thirteen*. I get that a society might have adulthood be reached earlier, but this really rubbed me the wrong way. I also understand that it was a way for the character to realize he was gay, but that could have also been approached in a different way. I would have probably written this scene differently or else have aged the characters up a few years because it really didn't fit with the rest of the story, which read more like situations a young character would find themselves in. I know I'm biased when it comes to prostitution in fantasy stories because it's one of those "historically accurate" tropes that I hate, but combined with the youth of the character... yeah, this was my least favorite part of the story.

There were a few other "historically accurate" type of tropes, like how women were seen as fairly useless, but that one was actually written pretty well since the culture is working towards more equality. I don't mind misogyny in stories when it's something that the characters/culture is working to change. (When this isn't the case, I tend to drop the book rating by several stars.) Mostly, though, this story felt refreshing and new.

Overall, this was an enjoyable story and I would recommend it to someone looking for a good lgbt+ fantasy book.… (mais)