I picked up this YA book because it was being recommended as an alternative to Harry Potter, and indeed there are quite a few similarities in plot: tweenage protagonist suddenly discovers she's a magic-user, living in a world divided between leopards (wizards) and lambs (muggles) and bands up with plucky fellow students to save the world from the evil sorceror Black Hat Otokoto (Voldemort) who has ties in the past with protagonist's dead relatives. Oh and there's a magic bus ride and a magic village where only the wizards, sorry leopards, can visit and shop, and protagonist turns out to be exceptionally gifted at the sport that the kids are all obsessed with, etc....

All that aside though, it is very strongly based on African mythology and "juju" magic and definitely does not have the look and feel of the middle-class-English Harry Potter attending Hogwarts. The protagonist is Sunny, an albino American-Nigerian girl who is constantly teased for her odd appearance. She befriends Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha and the four of them try to balance "real world" and magic studies while hiding all this from Sunny's parents, who would definitely not approve. Each person's specific gifts of magic are rather more personalized than in Harry Potter, and often tied to what would be perceived as their flaws by "lambs", so Sunny turns out to be particularly naturally powerful in areas tied to her albinism, while the other three have different specialties.

There was an interesting element of almost video game-ishness also; as the kids gain experience in new types of magic they are literally showered with coins as a reward. It appears spontaneously from the air around them and has to be gathered up. This seems to be to leave this particular world extremely open to some very detailed questions about who or what exactly is determining this rewards and balancing amounts and so on.

I quite liked Sunny but not quite so much some of the other characters in the book, but I'll definitely pick up the next book in the series to see what happens next. (It has one sequel so far, but was not a cliff-hanger, first book had a satisfactory ending that could stop there.)