Seventhborn (2018)
Written By: Monica Sanz
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Pages: 400 pages (Kindle ARC)
Series: The Witchling Academy Series
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Disclaimer: I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Why I Chose It: I actually looked up this author and liked the premises of some of her other work so I decided to try this one since it was a new series.
The premise:
Abomination. Curse. Murderer. All names hurled at eighteen-year-old Seraphina Dovetail. As the seventh-born daughter to a witch, she’s the cause of her mother losing her powers and, in turn, her life.
Abandoned as a child, Sera dreams of becoming an inspector and finding her family. To do that, she must be referred into the Advanced Studies Program at the Aetherium’s Witchling Academy. Her birth order, quick temper, and tendency to set things on fire, however, have left her an outcast with failing marks…and just what Professor Nikolai Barrington is looking for.
The tall, brooding, yet exceedingly handsome young professor makes her a proposition: become his assistant and he’ll give her the referral she needs. Sera is quickly thrust into a world where witches are being kidnapped, bodies are raised from the dead, and someone is burning seventhborns alive. As Sera and Barrington grow ever closer, she’ll discover that some secrets are best left buried…and fire isn’t the only thing that makes a witch burn.
Minor Spoilers
Discussion: So, it took me a really long time to get into this one. I think I was about halfway through before I really wanted to see what happened on the next page. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have finished it if it weren’t for the fact I knew I would be reviewing it. With that being said, I’m glad I did because I realized that while I had a hard time with the language and the writing, I did actually like the story a lot.
Sanz does a really good job of taking tropes I don’t really like in other books and twisting them into something I really enjoyed. For instance, Sera’s character started off with what seemed like the stereotypical angry teenager who is wrongly blamed for everything and hates everyone because of it. But as you go through the book you realize Sera’s anger is her strength as well as her weakness if only she can learn to control it. And instead of getting all huffy and saying “pfft, whatever, I don’t need to change anything about myself to suit someone else’s ideal”, she recognizes that she needs to do something about her anger and works hard to learn that control. I really admired her for that.
The love triangle is another trope I normally groan about, but this one was clearly different right off the bat. Sera really isn’t ever interested in the super handsome, popular boy who is inexplicably drawn to her. And while this interaction could have fallen into the “oh, she just doesn’t know how beautiful she is” trap, some conversations and back story added some much-needed depth. It was a nice change to see a heroine not fall in love with a boy just because he tells her how much he already loves her. And the other point of the triangle is someone so far removed from her normal sphere that she doesn’t even recognize their attraction as attraction until it’s grown into something much more mature, like trust.
Still, while I came to like Sera’s character eventually, I could not get past the problems I had with the language. Some dialogue felt old fashioned while internal monologue jerked us into the modern. Simple word choice issues made me go “huh?” way too many times. Like “she neared her wand to the wall”. It’s not quite incorrect, but it is very awkward and confusing.
Add to that the world building which felt inconsistent and a little vague in places. Sanz created this very realistic society and then added prejudice and persecution that was so over the top I had a hard time believing it. In the first couple pages a teacher throws a student against the wall just because she made eye contact with another student. This sort of abuse worked in the first Harry Potter because it was Middle Grade and Rowling embraced a sort of absurdist style that encouraged us to sympathize with Harry without really imagining the consequences of his aunt and uncle’s actions in the real world. But the same things ended up feeling forced and hard to believe in a mature Young Adult novel.
Putting aside those complaints, I did enjoy the mystery aspect, and I loved Sera and Barrington’s interactions during their investigations. So, like I said, I’m glad I finished it.
In Conclusion: In the end I really liked the story. I liked the kind of murder mystery with magic plot and the way Sera grew and changed over the course of the book. But I still found it really hard to get through just because of the language. Something about the style just made this very slow and awkward for me. It’s clear there will be more books, but I’m kind of on the fence about trying another one. Maybe by then the writing will have mellowed a little bit or maybe I’ll be more used to Sanz’s style. We’ll have to see.
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