I picked up School of Sight back when I was at VCon directly from the author! Always exciting, and it was a reward for me once NaNoWriMo was over to finally dig into it. And it was definitely worth the wait!
The book is about someone who has discovered that they have the sight and is being brought into the world of vampires, fairies, and werewolves just as a strange new force has entered the fray and is picking off the supernatural community one by one. The way the world is revealed is really well done, with a lot of things being presented as matter of fact and the perspective character just trying to keep on top of it while being fully aware of how lost they are. And they aren’t the only one, given that they live with two roommates who, honestly, take the news that the world is magic a lot better than they do.
Also, for folks like me, there’s a romance in it but it’s incidental to the narrative. The story is not and never becomes about the romance, which makes me so very happy.
You may have noticed I’m using they pronouns. There’s a reason for this. I never noticed it while I was reading it, but the main character’s name and gender is never actually mentioned. From other cues in the text, I think they are a male named Jose, but that’s largely based on very small hints and I can’t be sure.1 The book does generally have a good dose of queer content, which I like.
On the negative end, I did find that the pacing was great until the end when all of the things happened and there were some conveniences that could have been brought up earlier.2 There were a few concepts that I feel could have been brought up earlier so that it wasn’t all piled in at the very end to help smooth out that transition a little.
Overall, though, the ending wasn’t enough to deter me. It was more that it could have been done better than it was a detriment to the story as a whole. And the rest of the story made up for it, along with the world building. It was a lot of fun and I’d suggest reading it, though be aware that you might run into some issues talking about it.
- I may have to ask the author if this was an intentional choice or if I just wasn’t paying enough attention. [↩]
- Like everyone’s birthdays? You could have mentioned that earlier so it didn’t seem so out of left field. On the other hand, it was mostly used for raising stakes that were never going to happen, so… [↩]