What can I say? The plot is excellent, the prose is well written, and the characters have facinating abilities. And yet, and yet... well... I think the problem comes in that Wright, in the end, has some difficulty writing a female protagonist. She's never quite believable, especially considering her reaction to the perverse situations that Wright constantly insists on throwing her into.

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The book description makes this sound like a book most especially for teenagers but it isn't. Complex, weaving the mythology of several peoples, it will keep you guessing for half of the book. If you know lots about several mythological realms you might catch on fast. This book is set in the current timeframe. Not a "lite" read.

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Five children at a rather odd boarding school somewhere in England all discover they have 'magic' powers. After learning they are not human, their powers seem to manifest, leading them upon a quest to find out who they really are.

About one hundred pages from the end of this book I finally gave up the challenge after realising I just did not have the knowledge of either mythology or science to keep up with the story. If the author could have simplified it just a little I might have made it. I have read many good reviews of this book however, which prompted me to pick it up in the first place. I'm sure others may enjoy it more than I.

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Didn't even finish it. Felt like I got 200 pages of character but no plot.

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I thought I knew something about Greek mythology, but still found it a bit difficult to follow who some of the characters were supposed to be. But still an enjoyable and imaginative novel, and I'll read the next one in the trilogy. If you like far future sci-fi, check out the author's Golden Age trilogy. His imagination is astounding.

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The story is awesome, not a dull moment in the telling. I enjoyed the character and their different personalities. I can't wait to read the next in the series.

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Maybe it was because I read this book entirely during downtime at work and therefore only in spurts over a month, but I really hated this book. It's told from the point of view of a teenage girl, but other than the fact that she says she's a girl, you'd never know it from the way she thinks. She has grown up in an orphanage with four other orphans, but you'd never know these people had known each other all their lives from the way they treat each other. They're all obsessed with sex. The main character in particular likes it rough and the boys she's grown up with like siblings are happy to oblige. Throughout the entire story she has no idea what's going on, and since it's being told from her point of view, the reader has no idea what's going on either. We are introduced to myriad characters who are mostly from Greek or Roman mythology and have multiple unrememberable names and only very minor roles, or maybe even no role at all other than to be introduced. I found it impossible to keep track of them all and what their powers were, where they were from, and what their interests in the main character were. There's also a rather interesting bit of physics here regarding multiple dimensions and whatnot, but this part is too briefly touched upon and since the narrator doesn't understand this either, it gets lost in the roiling whirlpool of minor characters. To top it off, this ends on a major cliffhanger. I feel like I struggled through this for nothing, but there's no way I'm going to search out the next two books in this series. This book was a nebula award finalist--it must've been slim pickings that year.

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