I usually try not to do negative reviews, but knowing how popular it is and that it’s been traditionally published, I’m too frustrated to just ignore it.
Yes, I would be more forgiving if it would have been indie book, because I’d be more willing to believe the author is still learning and that she will improve with further books. And there was some improvement in each book, until book 4. Both book 4 and 5 have very similar structure, and how they’re written makes me think the author will keep writing this series as long as she can milk it, tossing drama and new problems in as needed.
It wasn’t so much a rage read as The Read of Disappointment. They’re not bad books , but they’re not good either.
I thought I didn’t come with much expectations, but I definitely expected something more from what currently is one of the most popular kids series.
The main focus and what differentiates the first book of Keepers of the Lost Cities from most magic academy books is the worldbuilding. Which is still pretty bland. It would have been fine, if paired with a decent plot and well written characters, but it wasn’t.
So when the worldbuilding doesn’t even make sense – like the school system – there’s not much else to like.
The school mostly exists for extra tension and drama, and Sophie is treating it as a regular high school where she’s forced to learn, because who would be excited to learn how to use magic?
Most of the lessons are one-on-one, which is nice and makes sense for immortal elves to have enough teachers to pull that off, but somehow she’s starting in level two, even though she doesn’t know anything and the teachers have to start with her in the beginning anyway?
Also, if she fails on tests, she’s going to be kicked out and sent to the only other school, which is shown more in a later book. And it’s not even described the same in those books. In book 1, it’s talked of as being for failures, and the only outcome is to shovel mammoth poop after graduating it. Which is also proven false by all the people shown having a variety of jobs and businesses after attending that school.
In the other book, when the characters visit there, it’s shown like the students are all criminals. So, you’re either elite or a criminal. Makes perfect sense. In a world where crime supposedly doesn’t exist.
Apparently living in a magical creatures preserve isn’t interesting either, because we barely ever see her interacting with the animals.
I did like that the elves had to lick panels beside the doors to open them. That might have been the most memorable piece of worldbuilding from the first book.
Another nice thing about those books is that, contrary to other Harry Potter knock offs, the author did remember that a big part of HP was the mystery.
Too bad all Sophie did was go to the library and ask about books about forbidden magic. Surprisingly, they didn’t have any. Later someone sends her a book about it, and the rest of the mystery is either solved by accident or by someone else.
All through the first book Sophie is very passive. Her only independent actions are, as far as I can think of, the already mentioned going to the library, and asking a friend to tutor her. No wonder it feels like nothing happens in this book.
Apart from that, she’s quite the Mary Sue, with a few flaws and skills she’s bad at thrown in, but they don’t ever hinder her at anything important, so it barely counts.
Also she makes stupid choices, but the author did try to make Sophie not look like a complete idiot by having her realize that some of her stupid decisions were in fact stupid, and having her try to figure out how to fix them.
All of the characters in the first book are more cut-out character tropes than actual characters, and their friendships are not very believable.
It is something that does get better in later books, and how the friend group is written becomes one of the strengths of the book.
The most questionable thing in this book is that an older brother appears out of the blue and Bragg’s about having 3 girlfriends. There isn’t any plot reason beyond telling us that he’s a bad guy. Which could be done in so many different ways, and was established in a more subtle way anyway, so it could have been skipped with no complications. So why would anyone just randomly put something like that in a book advertised for 8-12 yr olds?
And, on that topic, why would a book for 8yo focus so much on hot boys? Because that’s what Sophie thinks about most of the time. And I think overall the books would fit 12-15 age range better.
The ending in first 3 books was nice, summing up the plot and not leaving off on a cliffhanger, which unfortunately became the author’s go-to for books 4, 5 and I suspect later ones as well.
In book 2, there’s a big improvement in pacing, thanks mostly to the author abandoning the “1 book = 1 school year”. It happens in about two months, which gives the characters more time to interact.
Sophie is more active and more cool things happen, but it’s also darker as it deals with magically breaking of minds.
There are two ways that the minds can break, one is forcibly done by a telepath, the other is triggered by guilt.
So you’d think that a race of immortal elves who can be destroyed by guilt would have figured out that the only way to deal with guilt is forgiveness.
Instead, the advice they give is to push the guilt away… I’m sure it works great over hundreds or even thousands of years. Or, you can blame everyone else and give in to rage. Very healthy advice for young readers.
I did like how Keefe, the typical “mischief boy to rebel against strict parents” interacts with Sophie, and that he can’t figure out why he can’t get her to notice him. That was funny and cute subplot and I wish it would have been explored more.
Book 3 continues with the unhealthy emotional advice, that is coming from trusted adult characters, and is never corrected. The action and characters keep improving until Sophie decides to pick up a huge idiot ball, even though she knows it’s stupid while she does it.
As a punishment she gets a circlet restraining her abilities, which I thought would lead to an interesting arc of what happens when she’s not a special snowflake, but no such luck. Turns out it’s also painful and we get to spend a few chapters in emotional anguish. Yey.
At this point I got so frustrated with the book that I noticed my behaviour becoming worse, so if you have a teenager reading through book 3 and becoming extra grumpy, that may be why.
There is more action, to the point of too much happening too fast, and not all of it with logical reasons.
Book 4 was the best written book so far, and the time they spend in the treehouses in the hidden forest is probably the most fun from all those five books I read.
They’re constantly working on something, which keeps the pacing engaging, though the action seems very choppy, as there are multiple subplots and the author is jumping from one to the next each chapter, so it seems that there’s no progress on any of them.
The subplot I cared most about from the previous books – rescuing and healing Prentice, was treated as an afterthought, even by the main characters. Which is inconsistent with how they acted and thought in the previous books.
And the quest they chose to focus on while whining about having to prepare for rescuing Prentice? Even after it’s been concluded I can’t understand why it would be important. Kind of useful? Sure. But definitely not more than rescuing Prentice.
The bad emotional advice continues, but it doesn’t have as prominent space as in books 2 & 3, so I could just roll my eyes and move on.
The ending of this book is a very frustrating cliffhanger. Since we already had book 5, and I happened to have time for reading, I decided to suffer through book 5 so my mind wouldn’t be caught in the cliffhanger longer than necessary.
In terms of pacing, book 5 is very similar to book 4, with extra angst thrown in because the character who caused the cliffhanger keeps being stupid. Until the very end when he realizes he was stupid. Yey.
It was quite draining and disappointing, and while in both book 4 and 5 the main characters accomplish some things, the bad guys keep winning. And from the spoilers I looked up for the next books, it keeps going in circles like that.
The books have fun and interesting moments, but not nearly enough to outweigh the problems I just listed, and I cannot possibly recommend this series. We bought it because it is hard to find good middle grade series and it’s been recommended to us, but clearly it was a mistake. But, the problem of finding actually good middle grade books remains, so I’ll be putting in more effort to review more of them, and if you have any recommendations, please write them in the comments section so I can check them out.
If you like reviews in video format, I have a YouTube channel with a playlist of mostly positive reviews, but this one will also be included, so I ruined my record 😉 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKsZHay2kYYonNJRcTi6QLvg5tdNOonOT&si=lZS-ytXLX_XUchYx
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