The Iron Trial

Author: Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
Series: Magisterium #1
Pages: 298
First Published: September 2014
Genre: Middle-Grade Fantasy
Book Description (from Good Reads):  
Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.
Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.
All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.
So he tries his best to do his worst -- and fails at failing.
Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.


Thoughts:

The characters go gaining on you. The friendship is slow building but you get to care a lot about them. 
It is misguiding in a certain aspect, you are following  Call and you start to get the idea he is this guy they all have been waiting for but then no, he is not. Someone else has the power that make him "The One" but the story moves on for a bit. The huge reveal and the cliffhanger make you start to doubt what you know. You want to know the truth, can the revelation be true? But then again, it has already been accepted, so can the odds change now? 

It is a complex world in the way, the magic system is hard to grasp initially. But it is a middle grade book, the magic system is presented in bits and pieces but you get the hang of it. There is some growth in the kids who enter the school, most are preteens who go through making their minds up and moving away from their own preconceptions be from their families, growing up in and making their own assumptions about the world of magic,0 how people deal with magic or the decisions being taken once power is being gained, ect. 

Now the next books, will show the good faith of others, the power of nature vs nurture and may the best one win. 

I want to see what happens next and if the friendship survives such trial. But again, it is a very simple story. I can take a while to get around to finish it.

I gave it a 3.0-star rating.


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