So this book. I have a five star rating for all three books in this initial School for Good and Evil trilogy, but I have to explain that they aren't good books. I knew this reading them for the first time in 2014-2015; they were incredibly bloated, the characters' desires and behaviors oscillated wildly, and the dichotomies between good/evil, male/female, and new/old established in each book were poorly defined or explored. During my occasional returns to the first book, which I own, I have only continued to discover new offenses as my sensitivity to the portrayal of female characters, the promotion or rejection of certain characteristics implicit in their assignment to certain characters, and the signs of toxicity in relationships has developed.

Despite all that, I loved this book. I still like it pretty well. It has a lot of promise, a lot of style, and a lot of something I can't describe that appealed to me initially. I gave it to my little brother recently and he told me that something about the length, detail, and bizarre character inconsistency (paraphrasing here) made him feel like he was reading about real life, which on one hand makes no sense, but on the other hand may be the closest way to describe why I liked it. Maybe it could be said to feel like a fairytale placed directly on top of the awful story that reality would make, with all the careful revision, clarification, and paring down most fantasy stories are treated to thrown to the four winds. Maybe after reading so many of those usual fantasy stories, I just wanted to see something chaotic. I'm not sure! But to honor how I felt, I'm not going to change my ratings. I know these books are not good, but apparently they are five star.