This is a fun story about a mage that accidentally is made an accomplice to a crime that her father commits and has to go into hiding and take on a false identity so that she can study at magic university. It’s a nice premise to a story and I enjoyed reading it.

A lot of thought was obviously put into how the world and, specifically, the magic works. This is the sort of thing I love to see and happily the main character starts going to magic university so we get a lot of explanations. It’s also stated a number of times that what they’re teaching, especially at that level, might not be 100% accurate or the whole story. This extends to the police, who have many wild theories as to who Siobhan, the main character, is and what her plans are.

The characters are fine. The really interesting one is Oliver, who is a sort of rogue noble who wants to make things better for the common man and also runs a street gang. Siobhan, is fine, if a little uncomplicated. It was enjoyable reading about her, though more as a vehicle for exploring the world, rather than she’s going anything particular going on with her personally.

The book did, however, end a little abruptly. There didn’t feel like enough build up to the ending and, because there a 30 page glossary of magical terms at the end, when it did end it caught me by surprise. I felt that mostly a lot of things had happened but that we hadn’t got to the end of any sort of arc, plot, character or otherwise. It left a lot of things up in the air. In summery there’s a lot of interesting things going on in this book but I’m not sure that it’s all brought together in a satisfying way. I am very interested in reading the next book though.