What's better than a story about a magic university where a student's success is directly linked to their wealth stored in a bank run by antisemitic caricatures?

How about a story about a magic club with in-canon queer members who don't need financial d*ck measuring and instead spend their time being friends and developing crushes and helping each other with their lives and magic while being adorable and actually relatable! :D

10 Likes · Like

Pogstament

Status: extras #4 – highs & lows

Jan 17, 2024

Alright, so my review of this one of my first reviews on this website, and is mostly based on my personal opinions, and not so good analytical thinking.

With that out of the way, this story is really good, and I would highly reccomend it. The characters are very well written, and the representation seems good to me. Additionally, I was on the edge of my seat a lot of the time while reading, especially for the first 100ish chapters. However, my biggest praise to the story doesn't even go to this story, it goes to every other story that's tied in to it. The main reason I like this is because we, the readers, can actually get a metric ton of context to whatever might be happening, most notably the

Spoiler

plush scenario

[collapse]

, which shows how multiple new characters are being affected by what the girls are working towards solving.

With that said, I did have my own issues with the story. First and foremost, as the story progressed, at the beginning of the story these teenage characters feel like they're regular teenagers, doing paranormal stuff on the side. At some point (though I can't pinpoint where) I felt I more like they were paranormal researchers who just so happened to be teenagers. This might just be because they're getting more dedicated to it. That's really the only complaint I have that isn't a spoiler

That being said, I want to mention spoilers, so be advised

Spoiler

Cass and Cassandra are interesting characters, dont get me wrong, but I cant say im the biggest fan of their status as divinity. I feel like a lot of stuff became meaningless after this, because afterwards alot of things dont feel like they exactly have stakes. There's multiple times where The Council comes after Cass, and those arent really that interesting, because she can just sort of instantly make them a non-threat. I also find the judgement of Cassandra and Cass to be really weird, like, she forgives the two people who literally plotted and organized for her body to be used as an immortal vessel, unbanishable vessel, and doesn't really talk to the third member of the plot, Brian.

[EDIT] I feel like because Cass is a God, deaths might not have much impact, especially if she has the ability to just, bring people back. Granted, this is under the assumption that the series uses deaths, which it might not.

[collapse]

With that said, it's a really good story, and while this review isn't comprehensive, I hope this serves as a way to gauge if you truly want to read this book, if you were as indecisive about this as I was at first.

[EDIT 2]

I didnt realize this story ended and wrote my review under the assumption that the series would have more content yet (I'm not counting connected content, that is not content for this story). Firstly, I would like to formally apologize for incorrectly referring to Cass and Cassandra. So without further ado, lets get to it!

Spoiler

1. The stakes: Maybe its bc I'm more used to violent stories like Chainsaw Man, where stakes are much more apparently obvious, but I felt like after the absolute banger of an arc that was the evil teacher, the Stakes fell off until the big reveal that any exposure to magic will probably kill Cass. Then we learn her body is demonic and its just specific magics that'll kill her instantly and that felt like kind of weak to get rid of most of her weaknesses. After this, especially with Cassandra being willing to do most of the things that Cass is offput by, I felt there wasn't much in the way of things to worry about because the full scope of Cassandras power is massive. Any threats can be turned into something that's note exactly a major threat, but primarily still living animals.

2. Redemption: This was consistently a factor that was just kind of eh throughout the story. My big issue is Socha, like I get that she's dying and I guess its your choice if she lives after she decided to kinda just do something unspecified with your soul then take over your body and be literally unstoppable, but you had one conversation and decided on it, but spent a lot of time away from Kaylee for some bigoted thoughts she has as a result of living up under the primary influence of her parents that she only ever acted on at the absolute height of her ever heightening emotions due to the fae spell.

3. It was just alot of women: This might be a case of clothes at the soup store but I was kind of upset at the massive lack of nonbinary rep in main and side casts. There weren't really any trans men either, but probably just a clothes in the soup store issue.

[collapse]

2 Likes · Like