Hi again! I'm still between books so it looks like I'm going to review on my commute instead while I wait for Amazon to bring me the one that I want (nether-mind that I have a few hundred I haven't read at home already).
Which means here I am
Specifics
1.
Oooh fun introduction and a good way to set out expectations, especially about the demons being excluded. Who'd let those nasty demons in anyway. The last sentence is a little flat and may read better as 'But the humans didn't know that'.Madame Prince's Academy for the Gifted was not a usual school. It was a school for powerful inhumans - witches, wizards, shapeshifters, elementalists….. any kind of magic in the worlds (apart from the demons.) The humans thought it was just a fancy school.
2.
This is all a bit too info dumpy and well the narrative tone is quite fun and colloquial, it's boring to read about things that have already happened like this. I think you can jump right in and have the students talk about it later - it will be more interesting to hear about it through them.I know, I know. Why are they starting in the middle of the term?
Well, in the February half-term, one of the teachers left an enchanted diamond in the lab, to investigate in school time. It turned out to be cursed and blew up, exploding most of the school. Luckily nobody was hurt, but intensive repairs had to be carried out. Now it was fixed, and the pupil's extended holiday was over.
3. Yasmin's super tall, right? She's probably quite hard to knock down so maybe describe the force that the boy runs into her with or how she unbalances in her shoes? Is she wearing heels? I'm guessing not since they're at school but it will help us picture the scene instead of being confused that someone taller than everyone else is so easily knocked down.
Overall
So there's a lot of people being introduced here and a magical school so that's a lot going on! I think you need to be careful with your narrative voice - it starts out with a very colloquial narrator and then glides over to Yasmin's point of view but at the end there, it seems to be focused on Lavina and the new girl. I think the colloquial narrator works well for covering a lot of characters and a setting so probably stick with that but you need a few more of his/ her asides toward the end and when it switches from the school to Yasmin to Lavina, we need to feel like it's the narrator who's guiding us there so we have at least one constant throughout the chapter.
It's interesting that you seem to introduce the mean characters first an give them more screen time. I kind of like that and I'm hoping they turn out to be main characters for who they are, rather than for being the nemesis of Lavina. I think you also need to be careful though - bullying is a really sensitive topic for a lot of people and at the moment this feels like you're creating a race war since you've told us Jasmine is African, she has a Chinese friend and Lavina hasn't been described much but I'm assuming she's white? It may be best to describe the characters rather than to tell us they are African/ Chinese and to bring that into it more later. It's great to be diverse but people will be watching you even more carefully to make sure you do it 'right'.
I'm not sure about the blend of Norse mythology and more general magic, though if the narrator turns out to be a Norse God or something then that could work.
Overall, this seems like a fun and action packed way to start!
~Heather
Points: 6235
Reviews: 2631
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