Eigentlich ein nettes Buch. Der Beginn könnte etwas Bearbeitung brauchen. Der Autor wollte wohl seine Story schnell an einen gewissen Punkt bringen und hat den Einleitungskapiteln nicht genug Liebe gewidmet. Danach wird es flüssiger zu lesen und bis auf ein zwei überflüssige Parallelen zu Harry Potter hat man eine angenehme Lektüre vor sich. Bin gespannt, wie es weitergeht. ( )

Derivative, but almost self consciously so. References to Harry Potter abound, and a few Star wars ones too. A slightly moralistic tone pervades the heroines thoughts too, it comes acorss as preachy, the author wanting to make a point, which could have been achieved more subtly.

Emily is just an ordinary slightly nerdy teenager, not one of or wanting to be, one the in-crowd, but doing ok in college however with nothing much to look forward to. She's suddenly kidnapped/teleported to another world (The Nameless World), to be sacrificed as a Child of Destiny before being abruptly rescued by a mysterious benefactor/guardian. Who promptly decided she had magical potential and needs to be enrolled in the Magic School for her own safety and potentially to help save the known world against an invasion of cantankerous necromancers.

The school aspects are quite well done. As is the aversion to bucolic pastoral life, but the asides as to how much better it would be with some technology if only she knew hw to build a computer quickly become tiresome. The author frequently fails to realize the interconnectedness of technology: you can't have a computer without a phone system without systematic mining, without mineral surveys, forges, engines et al. One other grevious plot hole is the sudden appearance of a herd of horses for the heroes to escape on- they'd just notably walked up a mountain and through some tunnels, but suddenly there are horses ready to ride.

Quite fast paced with a few characters being a little abrupt in decision making and quickly changing their minds, it's nevertheless quite fun. It turns out there are another 23 in the series, and I'm not quite sure I'm willing to embark on that many. ( )

This book was a decent teenager-goes-to-magic-school book.

Nuttall does a good job with all of his characters. They're moderately interesting and not flat. For example, the character in this series who you think is going to be the nasty Draco Malfoy kind of bully--well, let's just say that what happens is much more interesting, she's not just all bad. And that's just one example--there are a number of interesting people here, and you can see that some of them are going to have very interesting roles in the next few books.

A comparison with Harry Potter is inevitable, so here goes:
- The magical system is more logical than Harry Potter. In fact, it feels a lot more like engineering or programming. The characters are able to deduce, from first principles, what a spell will do. (We don't get to see how it works, but we see them doing that.)
- There is hardly any humor here (unlike Harry Potter).
- A lot of it is about the friendships the protagonist makes with his dorm-mates.
- The ending is not a deus ex machina ending. Emily is actually responsible for winning, without the adults stepping in at the very last minute. She really is the hero. Harry Potter doesn't actually do much right, and if it weren't for Dumbledore stepping in at the last minute in a completely unexpected way, his life (and the series) would end a lot earlier.

While I think the ending works out better than the endings in most of the Harry Potter books, I still found it a bit unsatisfying. Emily does *something*, but it wasn't exactly something that felt like a logical extension of how she had been growing up to that point. (Um, how did that, uh, astrophysical phenomenon get into this story?)

I thought that this author's more recent series (beginning with The Zero Blessing) was much more interesting. Even better characters, an even more worked-out system of magic, and a less arbitrary ending. I preferred that one, but this one certainly held my attention as well. (I guess Nuttall is getting better and better as an author.) ( )

Nuttall, Christopher G. Schooled in Magic. Schooled in Magic No. 1. Twilight Times, 2014.
Christopher Nuttall is a fantasy author who seems to have made a career writing fantasy and science fiction books marketed on Kindle. Schooled in Magic is a competent, rather routine, young-adult magic kingdom fantasy heavily influenced by Harry Potter and Worst Witch. Emily is a loner whose high school social life depends on video games and novels. Like Harry, she is a “child of destiny,” which makes her a target of world-hopping necromancers. She is rescued by a sorcerer and ensconced at Whitehall, a school for magicians. From there, you could probably write the plot. The novel is weakened in my mind by the omission of Emily’s muggle parents from the story and the long absence of the rescuing sorcerer. The book is readable if you do not ask too many hard questions. Three stars. ( )

Good ideas, but the writing would benefit from increased editing. Obviously an early book. ( )