Magisterium

by Jeff Hirsch

In the twenty-second century Glennora Morgan's father has been working on a project which will allow him to penetrate the Rift and retrieve Glennora's mother; but now that he has suceeded the Authority is suddenly trying to kill them both, and Glennora and her friend Kevin must flee into the Rift to escape them.

• ISBN10: 054529018X
• ISBN13: 9780545290180
• Publish Date: 1 October 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Scholastic
• Imprint: Scholastic Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 310
• Language: English

Reviews

[jnikkir]

I just received this book courtesy of Scholastic and the Goodreads giveaway! Super excited to read it.

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I was SOOOOO happy about winning this book. I got it in the mail and it was so pretty and exciting-sounding and I was going to love it and gush about it and add it to my favorites shelf.

Yeah, no.

All I can think is, it should have been better.

On the surface, it sounds great: The world in Magisterium is divided, one side based on technology and the other on magic. -Awesome!- Book-smart Glenn, who has been struggling with her mysterious-Project-obsessed father, has to deal with first her father's arrest, and then being thrown into this other, magic-based world alongside her best-friend-but-wants-to-be-more, Kevin. -Conflict, sounds promising!- There is a pretty interesting magic system, cool fantastical creatures, ghosts, an evil ruler who needs to be toppled, etc, etc. -Yes, all good!-

This should have worked, right? I mean, it's got so many things going for it. But it just didn't.

I think the reason for this, at least for me, is that the characters felt flat. I couldn't bring myself to care about them. I didn't care if Kevin and Glenn actually got together, because I didn't feel any chemistry there. Yeah, the situation with losing her mom when she was six, and being raised by a preoccupied/obsessed father, kind of sucks. But when that eventually gets resolved, why didn't I feel anything?

One word jumps out at me when I consider how I feel about this book: disconnected. I didn't hate it, I just didn't enjoy reading it because I wasn't drawn into the world(s) or into the lives/motivations/feelings/hardships of the characters. Even though it has a framework that should work, there's not enough there to demand my emotional investment.


And this is my least favorite feeling when finishing a book - apathy. I wanted to love it; I'd settle for being able to find reasons for hating it; but it goes solidly in the "I feel nothing" category.