Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2017
Reviewer Rating: 
Reviewer: SJ Higbee
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Himself has added this to our towering TBR and given I have a real weakness for school-based adventures, I snagged this one for a recent train journey.
Caitlyn Aguirre should have been a magician. Her family certainly expected her to be a magician. But by the time she reached her twelfth birthday, Caitlyn hadn’t even managed to cast a single spell! In desperation, her parents send her and her magical sisters to Jude’s Sorcerous Academy, her last best chance to discover her powers. But as she struggles to survive her classes without a single spell to her name, Caitlyn starts to uncover an ancient mystery that may prove the key to her true powers. If she lives long enough to find it.
Caitlyn is an endearing protagonist. She comes from a magical talented family and is one of triplets. In magical circles, this is regarded as a boon because twins and triplets often have complimentary powers, making them an especially powerful unit–a necessary advantage if the Aguirre family are to keep their position as one of the leading magical families. But while both sisters are extremely gifted, Caitlyn cannot summon a single thing. Not that her parents are prepared to give up and accept the situation. Magic is part of everyday life. Everyone has some sort of magical ability, even the servants and lower orders use magic in their everyday lives.
Except Caitlyn.
It means she is at the mercy of her sisters’ pranks and while her parents occasionally step in to prevent her being killed, from the time she is seven, Caitlyn is routinely turned into frogs, dogs and mice, hexed so she behaves in stupid ways, magically frozen, stuck to the floor and even blinded…. Of course, it all eventually wears off. But she, with her zero ability, has nothing to fight back with.
Her only recourse is to study as hard as she can, in the hope that eventually, she will grow into her magic, as her father keeps promising. But by the time she is twelve, she has all but given up. Which is when she receives the worst news of all. She will be accompanying her sisters to the magical academy, St Jude’s. She is half convinced that she won’t survive the first term–because students are mostly supervised by older prefects, who are desperately studying for their magical finals. So it’s left to the juniors to sort themselves out. It’s no good Caitlyn running to sharp-tongued Sandy for help when one of the girls in her dorm targets her.
I loved the dynamic. It was all too plausible that this would go on in a magical establishment. I also liked the fact that Caitlyn’s only friend is a peasant girl on a scholarship who is naturally extremely magically gifted, but with no grounding in theory or how to mix with the higher orders. Nuttall’s magical system is also interestingly complex and the rules are well covered within the story as Caitlyn struggles through some magical lessons and manages to cope better in others by virtue of her constant studying.
Her plight is both believable and engrossing, so that I gobbled up this book in two sittings. I’m delighted to see there are other books in this series, which I’ll definitely be tracking down.
Recommended for fans of magical school stories
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