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Showing posts with label The Iron Trial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Iron Trial. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Review: The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

Publisher: Scholastic
Published: September 9, 2014
Pages: 299
Source: Borrowed
Rating: 2 Stars


Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial. 

Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail. 


All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him. 


So he tries his best to do his worst - and fails at failing. 


Now the Magisterium awaits him. It's a place that's both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future. 


The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come . . .

In short: Unfortunately, The Iron Trial just smacked of unoriginality to me.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's certainly true, and it may have been the thought process behind The Iron Trial, the first in a Middle Grade series by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare with a storyline that is remarkably similar to that of Harry Potter. We've seen how successful the story of the young boy going to magic school - marked at birth for greatness by an evil dark overlord who wants to be immortal - has been with Harry Potter, so why not just repeat this exact same storyline and make a few changes along the way?

I probably don't need to tell you that I'm pretty crazy about Harry Potter and its premise and concept. It's everything to me. But do I need to see it repeated almost exactly in another book? No, there's no point to that. The Iron Trial just smacked of unoriginality to me. It was hard not to constantly be making comparisons to Harry Potter while reading it. And what's more, not only was it an HP doppelgänger, but it was not a particularly great one. When compared to Harry Potter - which as I mentioned, is impossible NOT to do - The Iron Trial is undoubtedly the weaker of the two.

Would I have liked The Iron Trial if I had read it in a world where Harry Potter didn't exist? Yes, absolutely, the premise and concepts in that case would have seemed wholly original. And I find I can always appreciate the work that Holly Black and Cassandra Clare put into the engaging personalities of their characters. I still don't think I would have LOVED it though because I still found The Iron Trial to be missing that extra special something in the end. Overall, I'm sorry to say I was pretty disappointed by the unoriginality of The Iron Trial and I will not be continuing with this series.

Other Reviews:
Books and Other Happy Ever Afters
My Precious
Xpresso Reads

Author Links:
Holly Black Website
Holly Black Twitter
Cassandra Clare Website
Cassandra Clare Twitter