The Rook

This book would be the perfect argument to prove that elite education is useless. Just listen to me. We have a lady, who comes to her senses in a ring of dead bodies, with no memories and letters in her pocket from her pre-amnesia self. They explain to her that she was part of some super secret paranormal spy agency that handles all the spooky stuff in the UK. But someone attacked her, someone with a conspiracy in the organization that's called Checquy, by the way. Our heroine, Myfanwy (pronounced like Tiffany) simply goes to work the on Monday and... handles shit perfectly. Can we be honest for a second? This is BULLSHIT. The original Myfanwy got educated in a super secret, extremely thorough luxury Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, then became a person in a pretty damn high position. There is no way some random amnesiac could handle that. NONE. I mean why do they get kids from their parents as babies and educate the shit out of them if you can just drop them in as adults and everything is even better than before? Another book with AWESOME ideas and super fun side characters, but with an author who feels like he just had these cool little bits that he mashed together into a story that has some fundamental bullshit holes. We have quintuplets with the same mind, super cool vampires, evil Belgian alchemists. And we're stuck with a ridiculous hero. Ehh... Reading the background of the others through the secret letters left by pre-amnesia Myfanwy was sweet, though, we learnt some about many of them and it broke up the main story in a way that I found nice and pushing me to read more. The action sequences were good, I enjoyed them a lot. Hey, I found even the flashback letters explaining everything, which could have gone dead boring really easily. The thoughts and dialogue of Myfanwy, though... So much annoying sass thrown around. I'm sure Mr. O'Malley is a nice guy who is interesting to talk to, with wits galore, but I could like characters without them saying something snappy all the time, I promise! I had really high hopes for this, kind of like a less annoyingly verbose version of Kate Griffin's [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640]. Sure, it was less verbose, but in exchange, we got some other issues that stop me from giving it a better rating. Supposedly the second book will come out this year, which I will read. If not for anything else, then just for the side characters. The book ends with a last bit that gives potential to produce a pretty interesting sequel, so that looks nice.