A College of Magics (Caroline Stevermer)

A College of Magics
Caroline Stevermer
Starscape
Fiction, YA Fantasy
** (Bad)

DESCRIPTION: Faris Nallaneen came to the college of Greenlaw intending to be expelled. After all, she's heir to the dukedom of Galazon - possibly, according to some, the throne of Aravill - and her greedy, scheming Uncle Brinker isn't fooling anyone when he says he sent her to the distant school for her own good: until she reaches the age of majority, he gets to rule in her stead, and the longer she's away the more time he has to plot to make his temporary dukeship permanent. Besides, everyone knows that Greenlaw's chief interest is training witches, and like many Faris doesn't believe in magic as anything other than a mind trick. If she were expelled, she could at least go back home to try to reassert her presence and future claims; if nothing else, it would surely anger Brinker, who must've paid a pretty penny to secure her a spot at such late notice. Surprisingly, the Dean accepts her as a student, but Faris's misgivings compound when she finds that a rival - Menary of Aravill, whose family deposed Faris's late mother and father from the Aravill crown and sent them to die ignobly in seabound exile - is in attendance as well. Whether or not she wanted to learn magic, Greenlaw has its own ways of teaching, ways which even the headstrong dutchess-in-waiting cannot ignore... for if she does, the balance of the whole world may suffer.

REVIEW: I can sum up my problem with this book in four words: I did not care. Why I didn't care, I cannot precisely say.  Partly, it was because, wherever Faris is, her mind (and therefore the narrative) is focused somewhere else. When she's at Greenlaw, she can think of nothing but Galazon, the long-ago exiles of her parents, and the political machinations of her uncle. When she's away from the college, her thoughts keep going back to Greenlaw. It made me feel as though I was always a few steps removed from the plot, as though Stevermer, for whatever reason, didn't have access to the story itself, and had to imply its progress secondhand.  So maybe that's why I couldn't feel a thing for Faris, her British friend Jane, her enemy Menara, or even her Great Destiny and the Fate of the World. It may also have had something to do with the fact that Stevermer only created half of a world - four small duchies, in fact, plus a magic system so Vast and Profound it was impossibly vague to Faris (and therefore, to me as a reader) - and shoehorned them into an otherwise-normal early 20th century Europe. One would think that the simple presence of magic, no matter how elusive, would have some impact on such an alternate world, but if it had an impact we readers weren't advised of it, except in the vague way that "witches" from Greenlaw were accepted into high society whether or not they displayed true talent. Whatever the reason, I found myself filled with a profound apathy about the world, the story, even the magic system. I couldn't bring myself to care much about the climax, let alone the conclusion, which pushes the envelope of credulity in the neatness of its wrap-up. I only bothered finishing this book out of a vague sense of duty, and in a vain attempt to figure out why Stevermer named it after a college which only occupied a third of the total story. In the end, I couldn't even care enough to give it an Okay rating, though I know I've read far worse.