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The Iron Trial Book Review (Magisterium Book 1)

by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

After slogging through this book, I’d give it three clumps of lichen just based on the ending alone (if you read the book, this will make sense.)

 (in layman’s terms)

What originally attracted me to this book was its amazing cover. I loved the art style, and the death-eater-looking bad guy that dominates the scene (more on the Harry Potter similarities below.) The trio of kids below was a nice complement and created an air of conflict before I even opened the book. So, the cover rocked.

Once I opened the book and began reading, I found myself really intrigued by the prologue.  The writing’s voice was interesting, and the scenario really got me hooked: A lone stranger, climbing the icy face of a mountain only to discover that a massacre had taken place at the top. He finds an abandoned baby boy. Next to the little tike were the words etched in ice, “kill the child.”

Hook, line, and sinker. I was in.

And then… the story started. At first, I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I had a hard time getting into this book. After giving this some thought, I think my initial issues with this book were rooted in the poor pacing, and the lack of real conflict early in the book. I’ll explain these after the book blurb:

Most kids would do anything to pass the Iron Trial.

Not Callum Hunt. He wants to fail.

All his life, Call has been warned by his father to stay away from magic. If he succeeds at the Iron Trial and is admitted into the Magisterium, he is sure it can only mean bad things for him.

So he tries his best to do his worst – and fails at failing.

Now the Magisterium awaits him. It’s a place that’s both sensational and sinister, with dark ties to his past and a twisty path to his future.

The Iron Trial is just the beginning, for the biggest test is still to come . . .

So, my issues are centered in the pacing, and lack of real conflict early in the book.

Pacing – This book is really a setup for the series, which is nothing new. Not all book 1’s have to spend so much time initially setting up each character and his or her backgrounds, though. My guess is, ultimately, that the authors decided to make such a great prologue with such a compelling hook, because the beginning of the story was so slow. It’s a technique that buys the writers time to do all the info dumping they want. In a way, it worked with me, as I almost gave up on the book a couple of times but didn’t because I wanted to see what that prologue was about. I’m glad I didn’t give up, too, as the last quarter of the novel was quite good.

Lack of conflict early on – While this story had magic, and mysterious secrets, it really didn’t feel like it did. At first, I wondered if the descriptions just left me wanting. Then, the protagonist meets a fire elemental named Warren; a lizard that seemed devious and mischievous, and I was instantly paying more attention to the story than I had before. I realized that this lizard represented a real conflict appearing in the story for the first time.  Sure, Callum Hunt, the main protagonist, had a father that was seriously against him going to the magisterium, but it was expected for him to go, and everything pointed to him going, even though he tried to fail. The Mages wouldn’t allow him to skip school. This conflict didn’t feel real. And, yeah, there were bullies that would pick on Callum, but it seemed obvious that the adults and Mages would protect him somehow. That conflict didn’t feel real either.

But when Callum (spoilers coming) steals Warren, the fire elemental, and some key information about his past, the story takes a different, more risky turn. They get lost, and Callum’s forced to rely on Warren to navigate the dark caverns of the magisterium. Suddenly there was a real conflict. The reader could sense that Warren had dual motives, but wasn’t sure what they were. Things got real from there on.

Later, the true Makar (the chosen one) is revealed as someone other than Callum, and that other person is the only one that can beat the enemy of death. Then, the twists began. While Callum wasn’t the Makar, like the authors surely wanted the readers to believe he was, we learn that he has a much more twisted fate in store for him, and, to be fair, the twist was a really good one. For me, the last quarter of the book made up for all the rest.

Side note: There are a LOT of reviewers that hate on this book for some of its parallels to the Harry Potter series. While I can see where they are coming from, I didn’t feel like these similarities were so blatant that it hurt my personal reading experience. That said, I did notice a couple of things here and there that broke the “spell” momentarily, but I got my groove again fairly easily.

In short, if you can get by on the excitement produced in you from the prologue to last through the first 3/4 of the book, you will likely enjoy the twisted ending, and the real internal conflict it produces in Callum.