REVIEW: Breaking Magic by Alex C Vick

Author: Alex C Vick

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Format: Paperback

Page Count: 330

Release Date: July 2017

Synopsis:

Callax is fifteen, and he already knows he won’t ever grow old. Twelve years after leaving the childstation he will be summoned to the Gathering, where life essences are taken by a deadly, irresistible spell. On his world, this is one of the many ways in which the Exta serve the Opta. His best hope is to avoid an early binding by staying out of trouble.

But in protecting his younger brother Benedar, he was noticed by the Breaker, the evil magician in charge of the Gathering. The closer Callax gets to the ruling house and the girl who lives there, the more he learns, and the greater the danger. A danger he might not understand until it is too late. Callax thinks the Breaker’s defeat will save him, but he is wrong.

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. This in no way effects my overall rating of this book.

This is the fifth book in The Legacy of Androva series, but it can be read as a stand-alone.

Breaking Magic surprised me in many ways. From the wonderfully crafted characters to the richly imagined world, my eyes were practically glued to the pages. If I hadn’t just come out of a reading slump, I would have finished this book in just a few sittings. This book actually helped me out of my reading slump!

In a Dystopian-like world, our main character Callax (or Cal for short) is a Worker. That means he hauls rocks around for a living and constructs buildings and such for the Opta. The Opta are kind of like the people from the Capitol in The Hunger Games. They’re powerful and terrifying.

They have power over the Exta (Workers and Thinkers). The main Opta in charge are the Breaker and the Binder. They’re villains with evil running through their veins and I was honestly terrified of them every time they appeared in the book.

The Breaker holds this thing called a Gathering where Workers and Thinkers go to watch their oldest members get their life taken from their bodies. This happens to all Exta once they reach the age of 18 and that’s how the Opta keep control over the Exta. It’s horrendous and made me feel bad for the characters in this world.

Cal is a strong protagonist with a drive to do what’s right for those he cares about. He’s willing to sacrifice himself for those he loves and I love that about him. I also love his little brother Benedar, who is a Thinker. They have a great bond that I really enjoyed reading about.

Although I really loved the characters, the world, and the magical elements in this story, it took me nearly half the book to really get invested in the story, and the climax seemed to come a bit later in the book than what I’m used to. It was weird to adjust to that at first but I do see why it was necessary, since the author needed to introduce us to the characters and how they grew up and lived their daily lives.

The ending of this book absolutely blew my mind. I was not expecting the reveal at the end. I suspected something, but I wasn’t sure what it was going to be so I was surprised. The book wrapped up nicely so you could easily just read this piece of the saga without having to read any more, but I’m surely going to be checking out the other books in the future because I want to learn more about the world and the characters.

My Rating: 4.5 Stars

I highly recommend this book to anybody looking for a book with an interesting magic system and characters that you’ll be rooting for. The pacing of the plot was a slight downfall for me but didn’t really effect the overall enjoyment.