This was a curious mix for such a short tale. Given how short it is, there isn't much room for setting the environment/world, and mostly that works. I personally felt it would have been nice to have a little bit more of this world, but it did not detract from the tale. It's like looking at the world with blinders on- we can only see what's right before us. This is clearly a very violent world as well, as there are rules against starting a fight- but not against defending yourself. For a school run by Mages, I would expect there to be some procedure around using magic to determine if the survivor of a fight was telling the truth (otherwise every survivor would just lie)...yet we don't see evidence of this when a fight does break out.



Matt, our MC, is very resourceful, and must come from an interesting background to be so prepared to kill- and having admitted to killing in the past. Again, this hints at a very violent world where being a mage does not grant you a reprieve from that violence. One point did leave me wondering - when Matt is attacked, the reason given doesn't follow as logical. Why would Matt be the initial target? For the reason stated, I would suspect a much different approach- much higher up in the chain at the academy. Unless there is something else about Matt that makes him worthy of being the initial target- something not revealed?



The tale is well written, and clearly the details of this world have been carefully mapped out. I am planning to check out the later installments to see if my questions from this tale are answered.