Berls
Written on May 12, 2021
The biggest problem is that I don't love the main character, Tessa. I like her okay and she says things sometimes that really make me laugh. But she also is super quick to anger and a bit over the top in her demonstrations of said anger. I think the dialogue is where things grate on me a little... maybe? And the fact that she's just come back home with supposedly very little magical training and is being thrust - successfully - into all these intense scenarios. It's a little over-the-top. Which is a good way to describe all the characters. They are all very extreme with like 1 trait that defines them.
As for the magical world - it's neat. There's this community hidden from human view full of cast-offs from the magical community. And Tessa's family belongs to a magical agency - The Merlin Group - that protects the community. Only the community is under attack and her aunts are losing. So in comes Tessa, reeling from a bad breakup and not having been part of the community for over 5 years, untrained and... she's the leader? She's reading spell books on the fly and succeeding? And there's this giant problem with how power words are described. Tessa talks about how their super dangerous to use because there's no room for mistakes. You either use the words right and have this big sap on your power or use the words wrong and die. Within a couple chapters of her learning power words she tries to use them and says the wrong word, oh 4 or 5 times, and nothing happens. Um, that's not what you described.
Anyway, I am going to continue and see if some of that doesn't soften. I am listening and I have to say the narration is also just okay. I don't know if it's a case of not great dialogue so your voices aren't great or the voices exacerbate the dialogue problem? The male voices are a little rough sounding. Not enough to make me stop and just read, but not making this narrator a favorite for me at this point.