Trial By Fire (Schooled in Magic Book 7)

For anyone who has fallen in love with this series, this is one the more powerful volumes yet. A must read that leaves so many things answered and so many many more not. So we wait with bated breath for next book to be written and released.

I find that I start many series written by Christopher Nuttall, and I finish none of them. There always seems to come a point where I can no longer tolerate the lack of character displayed and the paper thin plot twists that get grafted into the story to make it "exciting".

I have reached that point with this series.

Sadly, I think its a good idea for a series and the first couple of books which work as both origin and world building volumes are solid.

This book however shows that nothing new has been added to that great foundation.

Emily is still the bookish mouse of a girl who despite her great power can't seem to display confidence ever. She ditters and panics uselessly again and again in this tale. All the while heading towards a rather obvious ruin.

This was "helped' by the Deus ex Machina plot devices used. I want to avoid spoilers, but if you have read the previous books you might have noted how Emily always ends up having to pull greater and greater magic tricks off to awe the masses while somehow averting a great catastrophe. Let's just say the formula hasn't changed, but as Whitehall has been hit before, a new twist on that had to be conjured up out of thin air. In my opinion it was frightfully weak as was the method used to defeat it.

This story just wasn't compelling or fun to read.

Much stronger book then the last. Emily begins to deal with her emotional problems, and must face new problems at the school including a teacher who may want to kill her. Few new characters and little growth in the secondary characters. Series remains readable and interesting, but slow to movemthe story arc along.

In enjoyed most of this book, but every mention of the romance with Caleb slowly killed my enjoyment. One of the main draws of this series for me has been that there is no romantic subplots dragging the story down. In fact Emily was one of my favourite characters in fiction for this very reason, she was far too busy studying magic, adapting to a new world any trying to run Cockatrice to truly bother with the romance game. For good reason as all of the above is far more gripping reading then reading that Emily wants to kill Caleb. I am sad to say that this will be it for me with this series. I have yet to come across a long running series such as this where the addition of romantic subplots has actually improved anything rather than making it worse. The proposed name for the next book is also not very promising in terms of this situation.

This is the same formulaic story that I have wasted money on for the last four books! The character does not evolve -- if you read the first book, you will see the same whining little girl as you see three years later. I was bored stiff. I paid good money to read about a whiney little school girl go to classes and bitch about her lot in life. I'm done. It took me a while to catch on, but catch on I did. I stayed on six books too long already.

This series, by Christopher Nuttall, has turned into one of my favorites. Unlike many writers of an extended series he is not started to phone it in but has kept up a steady development of his main character, one that has many good points but is also flawed and has to fight against her own limitations and he puts his character threw the proverbial wringer - there are real consequences for her actions, both for other people and herself. When I read a new book in the series I find myself going back to read earlier stories in the series. Thank you Mr. Nuttall, for caring enough about your readers to continue to publish solid stories that keep our attention.

7 books deep I obviously more than somewhat like the series, that being said... Could the progression get any more glacial? It's slow enough at this point that it might as well have been just the last 24 hours in the protagonist's story arc. 3 stars because the charm is wearing thin. The world build is solid enough to support any number of books even after "graduation day". A little more butter on the toast would be appreciated.

I've been reading this series since the beginning and I always regret getting to the end of the latest book because I know the next one won't be available yet. This one was a tad shorter than I'd like (because duh, I want to read more of it). Can't wait for the next one. The writing is very good, the characters have become well developed and the story is managing to stay interesting and engaging all the way through 7 books.

The world Mr Nuttall has developed has a very different set of twists with the magic versus physics universes. Strong issues with medieval values running into lower class American issues and implied sexual problems to be overcome.

Lady Emily must die.
So say her enemies, whose number grows year by year. And change continues to come to the Allied Lands. The genie [concepts/ideas that Emily has brought from Earth] has truly left the bottle, for better or worse.
Year Four sees Lady Emily working on her first joint project. The purpose of the project is the close teamwork necessary for the two students to successfully complete their project.
Emily has had trouble all her life making new friends and has never had her grade depend on such a joint endeavor before. And her teammate is both a stranger [at first] and a boy.
Then accidents begin to plague most of the First and Second Year students. Minor injuries but did they ALL really walk into a wall?
Just to top it off, Emily and Aloha have both completed the only two years of Martial Magic offered at Whitehall. So, a private tutor is retained just to put the two of them through their paces so they do not lose what they learned earlier.
Except it is Master Grey, who hated Emily on sight the first time she met him.
This series continues to be a great comfort to me. During trying times, I can always count on the Schooled in Magic series to provide excellent entertainment to take me away from the troubles of the day!