Hollowpox Review

Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market, and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith, and control the power that threatens to consume her.

Jupiter is definitely one of my favourite characters in this series. He is just super supportive of Morrigan and lets her express her opinions whilst also giving her boundaries. He actually listens to her and wants to know how she is feeling and always has her best interest at heart.

 Morrigan has a bit of a rebellious phase in this instalment. She has a period of self-isolation from her friends and focuses on the shadow classes and really starts to become obsessive with becoming a better Wundersmith. There were little instances, like when she tries to steal the book and gets her friend to cover up for her, or when she ruins away to become Ezra’s apprentice and ends up getting manipulated by the president. But I really appreciated how she took into account all of the advice she has been given and listens to those in authority and sees the error of her ways and apologises for the things she’s done.

The mystery surrounding the Hollowpox was interesting and again gave us more of an insight to Nevermoor and the people living there. It was a little predictable how it was created and the way the storyline progressed it seemed inevitable that the ending would turn out the way it did.

For some reason this didn’t quite keep me as engaged as the previous books in this series. I can usually get through one of these in a day or so and I ended up only getting around 20 pages in and then put it down for nearly a week. I just didn’t have that urge to pick it up and finish it until I forced myself to.

⭐️4/5 Still such a fun, action packed, entertaining read!

Wundersmith Review

9780734418227This was a great sequel!

This book really delved so much deeper into the land of Nevermoor and we are beginning to see some of its fantastical elements. I love the trick lanes and their classifications, especially since we are made aware of them early on in the book with no explanation.

Morrigan had such a hard time in this book and it really had me cheering for her. Nobody really knows what she has to deal with being a Wundersmith and having that stigma attached. So when she is still constantly told that all of the Wundersmiths are horrible and evil of course you would start to second guess yourself. Thank goodness for Jupiter who mostly was always there to support Morrigan and tell her that she is good. I loved how he scoured the city to try to prove to her that there was some good Wundersmiths in the past, which really cemented how good and honourable and supportive he is.

I love the unit element as well. How these nine kids who only met during their exhaustive trials would somehow connect and become a family. And to have their bond tested so early on with the blackmailing was a great twist. Miss Cheery was a wonderful character as well, I really loved her. She was a constant in these kids’ lives, when they needed a bit of stability she was there. She really proved how loyal and supportive of Unit 919 she is and it really showed throughout the course of the storyline.

The Wunder Society kind of got on my nerves for most of the book. How they decided to just quash Morrigan’s knack and not give her the tools to control it. She knows almost nothing about being a Wundersmith and is forced to just deal with it on her own. Jupiter is off trying to figure out the disappearances and he can’t intervene on her behalf, so she has to weather the storm on her own. She acted exactly how I would have in her situation so that made me like her even more! They did sort of redeem themselves at the end though so I’ll give them that. Forcing Morrigan to reveal herself sort of forced them into action and teach her the proper way to handle her knack.

This was a fantastic read. It is very fast paced and with every turn of the page there is something going else going on. All of the components are established very early on in the storyline and they are just weaved throughout the book so well that when the reveal happens you didn’t see it coming at all. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen next in this book which really kept me invested and interested.

⭐️4.5/5 Please read this series you won’t regret it!