Book Review: The Knightley Academy Books

"It's a curious thing, change. You never get used to it, and you're never sure where it comes from, but you better learn to expect it." 

I admit it, I didn't finish the 25 Days of Christmas Baking.  Quite frankly, I ran out of recipes. If I do this again next year, we'll have to only do twelve days.  I can't do 25. That being said, it's all in the past, right? Now we can return to our usual blogness of book reviews, and commentaries and lists and what-have-you. And we will be happy to do it!

Back into the game with a Book Review!

Henry Grim is a servant boy who never imagined the opportunity which he has been given.  He is being allowed to take the entrance exam to Knightley Academy: a place where young boys of the best families become Knights of the Realm of South Britton. Sure, it's just a loop-hole, but he takes the exam.  And Henry, a boy genius with a special penchant for languages and accents to top it off, gets in handily.  Inspired by his success, the directors of Knightley Academy decide that the two remaining spots in the class will be given out the same way:  commoners, for the first time ever, can sit the exam for Knightley Academy, yielding the other two commoner entrants:  Adam Beckerman (son of a wealthy Jewish accountant), and Rohan Mehta (the Indian, adopted son of a South Brittonian Lord). There is also a war brewing with the vaguely Soviet Russia, vaguely Nazi Germany northern neighbor, the Nordlands.

I started reading this book because I was trying to learn what "Steam Punk" was.  I hear the term everywhere, but I had no idea what it was.  So I looked for Steam Punk books. And it had some ups and downs.  Many people criticize it for being a non-magical, Steam Punk version of Harry Potter.  And I hear the criticism, for sure.  There is a poor boy named H-something-y.  He has his two friends, one of whom is very obsessed with rules (Rohan/Hermione) and the other who loves food and is always a bit slow on the social uptake (Adam/Ron).  They go to a school for special people (Knightley Academy/Hogwarts).  They have a teacher they hate (Lord Havelock/Professor Snape), a French-named nemesis with blonde hair (Valmont/Malfoy), have a competition with a Northern-European-esque school (The Partisan School/Durmstrang), and narrowly avoid expulsion at least once a book. Then in the second book, they start a club to learn to fight (The Battle Society/Dumbledore's Army).  However, I do think there is also a lot that is doesn't have in common with Harry Potter, so I don't necessarily find problem there.

When I first started the book, I put it this way:  they have many similarities, but where J.K. Rowling is a more gifted story-crafter, Violet Haberdasher is a more talented writer.  However, as the book went on, her quirky voice left and it felt more and more and more like a cheap Harry Potter rip-off. Furthermore, she came to seem to understand nothing about the world and the way things work.  In the second book, their biggest concern is that if the Nordlands break the Longsword Treaty (which makes it so that no one in the world has an army, or anyone trained in combat at all), South Britton still technically has conscription of any boy over thirteen, and they, as the students of Knightley Academy will be leading them.  Really? Because a world where no one has an army (first of all is plausible) would have such Draconian conscription laws?  She also probably shouldn't write teenage boy characters, if she thinks that your friend kissing your crush would lead you to cry under the stairs.  Really?

When I got to the second one, I spent a lot of the book saying "This is awful, but I have to finish...."  The last 100 pages really picked up and got interesting again, but I doubt most people got there.  The book was written very much so to have more in the series, but it's been nearly four years, and not a word of a third book.  The first book was enjoyable and interesting.  The second was murder to get through.

Would I read a third if it was written?  Yes.  Do I think that it will really live to be a classic of children's/YA literature?  Not really.  (As a side-note, further investigation has informed me that Violet Haberdasher's real name is Robyn Schneider, and she is a bioethicist and vlogger who has written a slew of other novels that were actually somewhat successful).

I bequeath it with three stars.