Flex ('Mancer, #1)

I liked the second half better than the first. There were a lot of cringy parenting moments in the first half. The ending made me want to read the sequel right away (in a good way, not a cliffhanger), which is in pretty sharp contrast to some of the early parts that had me wondering if I could finish the book at all.

I liked the premise, but the worldbuilding felt shoddy and ill-considered. I get that it was supposed to be a world 'just like ours', only having possessed 'mancers since the dawn of civilization. The problem is that I was never sold on the merging of those two conflicting conceits, and a few throwaway paragraphs about World War II and Europe being lost were hardly enough to explain it away.