Blurb from Amazon:
"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."
Review:
NOTE: This review contains MILD SPOILERS for Seventh Born.
Seventh Born took me an absurd amount of time to get around to, considering the fact that I was in the middle of it when it got pulled down. But after finally acknowledging that I actually wasn't going to read those other three books any time soon, I finally pulled this one off my shelf and dove in.
Unfortunately, I didn't like this book all that much.
There were, obviously, things that I did like in this novel. It was a fast read. The writing flowed well, though it was a bit clumsy in some places. And the world was interesting.
Perhaps my favorite part of this book was Sera's personal storyline. She has powers she doesn't know how to use, a history I wanted to explore, and a number of other things going on in her life that were (at least on the surface) fascinating. I wanted more of it—a lot more, preferably. Which brings us to my next point.
My main issue with Seventh Born lies in the fact that this novel feels like, perhaps, the third or fourth book in a series. We are dumped in the middle of what seems to be a very complex world and we are given very little in the way of information; that would be far more forgivable if this story wasn't taking place at a school that studies the magic of the world, its history, and other such things we would benefit from knowing. There were plenty of opportunities to present information to the reader, but they weren't taken. This absence of information carries on throughout the story and it makes it difficult to connect with the main character's struggles and the story itself.
In lieu of valuable world building, we are given scenes of suffering. Cartoonish, secondary villains antagonize Sera over and over again. Sera continuously complains about her lot in life. And that is fair, given her circumstances, but the scenes don't serve a great deal of purpose. In fact, there are many scenes that seem as though they exist only to show the reader that Sera suffers, whilst not making a great deal of sense.
There is also another aspect of this novel that I don't especially care for. There is an issue with consent in the book that's left mostly unaddressed, which was off-putting for me. This issue is fairly mild, but another character likes Sera and kisses her several times without permission and against her wishes. One could argue that he thinks she's into it, but it is previously addressed that he has the ability to feel other people's emotions through touch and nearness, which means he knows she isn't interested in him and chooses to ignore this fact in favor of pretending that she wants him, too. Sera treats this as if he doesn't know how she feels, but she is the one who noticed he was empathic in the first place, so that was either a minor plot hole or she was just excusing his behavior. Either way, I didn't care for how that was handled.
All that said, I did enjoy the atmosphere of the murder-mystery plot in this book. There was something about the way it was written that dragged up memories of movies like Sherlock Holms and The Great Mouse Detective. In short, it was a good time. And the necromancy aspect of the plot was compelling enough to keep me reading, even through parts that weren't to my tastes.
In the end, I think this book had a lot of potential. It just didn't quite get there for me. I won't be adding it to my favorites shelf any time soon, but Seventh Born was a fairly smooth read. And, if you're looking for sort of a fun, dark, magical mystery read, you might enjoy this.
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