#dhonielle clayton

Day 26: JOMPBPC: Black And White

The Marvellers

Dhonielle Clayton

June 2, 2022

I’m a big fan of magic schools, so I was extra excited to get my hands on what I hope will be the first in a nice long series. Because this world was fun as hell and the main characters were engaging, fun and memorable, even the teachers. I also really enjoyed the magic system set up there in and Clayton’s intentional choice to be inclusive.

That said, I wish — and I never thought I would say this — that the attempts at making this world more open for all were handled a bit more smoothly because it really felt like nationalities were getting ticked off a list at one point. Like, go ahead and stress the international nature of this school, I loved that aspect of it, but find a way to do so more organically (or rather elegantly). My other minor gripe, and I recognise that this is me specific, but Clayton name checks a whole bunch of YA and middle grade authors as professors at the school. And while this was fun at first, it proved a bit distracting and kept taking me out the more I kept reading. I will say, however, that these are still minor quibbles.

Given the theme and subject matter of this series, I know it’s going to get compared to Harry Potter and you know what? It does scratch that itch but it also gives you something new to dive into and fall in love with. I actually prefer The Marvellers and what it’s trying to say about who can do magic and even what that can look like because Clayton really has created a world with such intention. I trust that she won’t look back and try and rewrite any history regarding the series. The one point I will concede to R*wling is that she made introducing a magical world, school, and magical system seem effortless, and maybe that is her only true skill as a writer. Because Clayton does falter a bit in that regard as I felt like I encountered a few too many new words that were not introduced as smoothly as I would like. But that didn’t matter too much by the end because the book is so fantastically engaging.

In fact, the central mystery is gripping and unfolds at an excellent pace once we get past the set up and it even crescendos in an exciting manner towards the end. I literally did not want to sleep because I wanted to know what happened next. Clayton has created a winsome trio of main characters who I really cannot wait to get back to. The book is fun, fast and easy to read, which I cannot say is true for all books within this genre, so I really want to laud this book because it came on the tail end of another terribly drudging read that I ended up just quitting out of exhaustion.

Anyway,The Marvellers is one of the most engaging and fun books I’ve read in a short while and I cannot stress how many more people should read it.