Callum Hunt has been told all his life by his father that that magicians can’t be trusted. So when he is tested for magical ability he intends to fail, but somehow he is selected for training at the Magisterium. Previously an outcast he’s happy to find himself fitting into the school and making friends but intends to fail the Iron year so he can leave the school and go back to his life.
I’m liking
The authors Holly Black and Cassandra Clare are both well known for their previous books and rightly so. In The Iron Trial, they’ve combined to write a book that I enjoyed and found interesting. Fantasy is a well-mined genre and comparison with Harry Potter is perhaps inevitable, however, I thought that the book trod a nice path independent of many stereotypes but also using typecast characters nicely.
Things that made me go hmmmm
The lead characters are age 12, which in some ways indicate that this is a young adult book. And initially it does seem to be young adult fiction, however, it deals with some adult themes such as death of a close friend. So I’d perhaps suggest this gets taken into account in terms of the age the book would suit.
The conclusion
I found this an enjoyable book and I liked the internal debates the Callum has with himself as he wrestled with the choices he had to make. I’m keen to see how the series progresses.
