Legacies

Legacies (shadow grail 1) by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill
2.5/5 stars
320 pages
Published on July 6th 2010
Source: Goodreads

The story:

Spirit White has survived from a deadly car crash that has killed her mother and father and her sister. She has been discovered by a school with special talents, called magic. A couple of months after staying, people begin to disappear, some vanish to be never seen again, so Spirit and her new friends begin the investigation. But will they find out the truth of what is going on? Or will Spirit and her friends suffer a terrible fate from which they don't know about yet?

The review:

My thoughts?

I've read a few books that follow the same storyline as Legacies and I've come to expect exceptional characters, school masters that grudgingly bend the rules, a really evil figure that's usually part of the student body or staff, some form of celestial intervention and finally a strong main character with an awesome power/destiny that's there to really bring the whole thing together and give meaning to the story. This book disappointed me on more than one count.
Spirit White (yes that IS her name) isn't that character, she doesn't have that power/destiny (at least not in book 1) and she most certainly doesn't get cozy enough with any of the teachers to have them bend the rules for her. Instead she builds herself a nice little fortress behind her friends and lets them do most of the heavy work. Granted she doesn't have any magic that she knows of but that's no excuse to slack off and scuttle around like a scared animal.

On the other hand, I loved the friends. They're awesome and actually have the guts to stick it to the 'Powers that are' at Oakhurst. They form a brilliant band and, in my opinion, writing out the characters in such way really helps bring them out and make them essential to the plot.

Where Oakhurst is concerned, I don't like it. While I usually dig the school and how it works but not this time. It's scary how little the headmaster knows about what's going on and how he treats the kids (of course it might be that he's being spelled, just saying) and it's whole attitude is disturbing. It's ok to warn the kids and to train them as hard as you can but pushing them that much and turning them against each other is taking it a bit far...

I liked the rest of the plot, the whole 'kids disappearing because of a band of bloodthirsty magical creatures' is always a success and how Spirit was finally useful makes you think that she might not be that bad but, alas, I still wish there'd been some sort of explosive revelations instead of just a tingle of power. I guess we can't have all we wish for...