Review: Magisterium

Goodreads Summary: It's the year 2120. On one side of the Rift is a technological paradise without famine or want. On the other side is a mystery.

Sixteen-year-old Glenn Morgan has lived next to the Rift her entire life and has no idea of what might be on the other side of it. Glenn's only friend, Kevin, insists the fence holds back a world of monsters and witchcraft, but magic isn't for Glenn. She has enough problems with reality: Glenn's mother disappeared when she was six, and soon after, she lost her scientist father to his all-consuming work on his mysterious Project. Glenn buries herself in her studies and dreams about the day she can escape to the cold isolation of a research station on 813, a planet on the far side of the known universe. But when her father's work leads to his arrest, he gives Glenn a simple metal bracelet that will send Glenn and Kevin on the run, with only one place to go. The other side of the Rift will bring truths about what really happened to Glenn's mother, and will put them at the center of an age-old struggle between two halves of a divided world.

I was almost twenty percent into this novel before I started to get interested...I just couldn't find myself getting invested in the story that was being told, it had been a fight on my part to get that far. If I had just picked this novel up for the heck of it I probably wouldn't have made it that far, or continued, just set it aside for another time. But since it was from Netgalley I persevered. For me, the beginning of the novel just felt too familiar, it felt like I had read it before somewhere and this time around it just ceased to engage me. I wanted more. I expected more. And I just wasn't getting it. 

I finally found my rhythm and made it a little over half-way through the novel before putting it down again. I had lost interest because everything that was happening, I knew it was going to happen. The novel had just become so predictable. I just KNEW everything that was coming. Something would happen and in my head I would be thinking "Bet they do this next" or "And now we're going to find out that" and lo and behold, I WAS RIGHT. Which after a few times gets kind of boring. 

And let's talk characters since you guys know how important they are to me, characters are just the driving force in my reading...usually. In the beginning I thought Glenn had potential as a main character, I thought that once we got over the initial hump that I would enjoy her. Unfortunately I didn't. She bugged me. She was just too...I'm not even sure what the word is for her. I guess she was just too set in her ways, kind of like that old cliche of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. And then there is Kevin...let me just start by saying when I found out he had a mohawk I was entranced, I thought that he was going to be the character I adored...and alas, he was not any more than Glenn was. He just does not THINK. He's far too easily swayed and just dives into things without thinking AT ALL. 

What really stood out to me in this book was the world that Jeff Hirsch had created. The two sides of the Rift were incredibly intriguing. I really liked the whole technology and science versus fantasy and the mystic thing that Jeff Hirsch had going on there. Enough that I'd love to read a book on the world alone. Oh yeah, I'm nerdy like that. It just seemed SO INTERESTING. And I would have loved to really delve into how the world had gotten that way, how the separate sides of the Rift had developed themselves, and so on. Unfortunately, the novel is a bit too character driven to give me all of that. Still, does not change the fact that the world is a fascinating one.

Overall Magisterium just didn't click for me. We weren't compatible. Hopefully you, my lovely readers, will be.