Interesting book--I walked into this with some trepidation as some of my reviewer friends knocked it about pretty harshly but the premise intrigued me enough to lure me further. I think some of its negative character qualities mentioned by others is a bit overblown. So don't worry yourself too much about it.

I'd love a prequel of the great awakening. The world must have gone to chaos for a moment.

What happened later was no less knee-jerk and really in today's age I am not terribly surprised.

Cole brings a lot of sensical notions to this book of magic in the modern age. His system for it is pretty solid and his general geopolitical temperature seems right on the mark. My hiccup in the early start of this book is Oscar is far too much a thinker. I mean this guy is rowing over way too much deep thought in moments where fight/flight/adrenaline/reaction rule the day. I understand the why, he is trying to set up the motivations of a character--but it all feels so expositionally (new word!) heavy that it could have been laid out in a novelette instead of the first few chapters with a hammer.

Regardless, the world get's moving, crap as always hits the fan and poor human instincts leads to bad decisions, casualties, and new causalities.

After the beginning warbles the book pretty much hits a good stride of character development, team building, exploration, and of course a generous amount of exploitation. Oscar continues to have more diatribes than a school girl before prom but you learn to let a bit of that go for the overall good of the flow.

Part of me wished this was a choose-your-own-adventure because like a good community film there were plenty of times I heard the audience yelling, "Don't do it!" or "Behind you!" or.. "WTF!?", haha.

Solid start, crazy adventure, fun magic system, military protocols, and some seriously bad decisions create what is in here. You may like it, you may love it, you may have issues. Welcome to the SOC..