A Door in the Dark Series: Waxways #1 Published by Simon and Schuster on March 28, 2023
Genres: JUVENILE FICTION / General, Young Adult Fiction / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Wizards & Witches, Young Adult Fiction / Loners & Outcasts
Pages: 368
Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon
Goodreads
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“For readers who have just finished Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves and are ravenous for more dark academia” (Booklist), this “pulse-pounding” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) fantasy thriller follows six teenage wizards as they fight to make it home alive after a malfunctioning spell leaves them stranded in the wilderness.
Ren Monroe has spent four years proving she’s one of the best wizards in her generation. But top marks at Balmerick University will mean nothing if she fails to get recruited into one of the major houses. Enter Theo Brood. If being rich were a sin, he’d already be halfway to hell. After a failed and disastrous party trick, fate has the two of them crossing paths at the public waxway portal the day before holidays; Theo’s punishment is to travel home with the scholarship kids—which doesn’t sit well with any of them.
A fight breaks out. In the chaos, the portal spell malfunctions. All six students are snatched from the safety of the school’s campus and set down in the middle of nowhere. And one of them is dead on arrival.
If anyone can get them through the punishing wilderness with limited magical reserves it’s Ren. She’s been in survival mode her entire life. But no magic could prepare her for the tangled secrets the rest of the group is harboring, or for what’s following them through the dark woods…
Review:
A Door in the Dark is a book I read the blurb of many times but kept passing on as I wasn’t sure about it, as Dark Academia can be hit or miss for me. I have read the author’s Ashlords series, so I knew what to expect from the author and knew it would be a great ride if I could get into the story. The prologue truly sets your intentions for the book, and this helps draw you into the story because you’re wondering when that particular scene will pop up and why it even happens. This author truly has a grasp of how to make his words flow easily off the page and how to keep his reader interested in his subject matter. And can we talk about the cover? Artistically, it’s gorgeous. But once you read the story and then go back to look at it, it takes on a completely different meaning to your eye. It incorporates elements of the storyline well. The idea of magic existing but people having to have a currency to use it is so interesting. It never occurred to me that magic could be controlled as such. Like most societies you read about, it gets divided unevenly based on where you fall. It just reflects so many things we see in our current culture. The world-building was good. I was given the background to understand most of what the world was like. I would have liked more background on the magic in the book, though. I am eager to see where what we learned in this book leads us in the sequel.
About Scott Reintgen
Scott Reintgen has spent his career as a teacher of English and Creative Writing in diverse urban communities in North Carolina. The hardest lesson he learned was that inspiration isn’t equally accessible for everyone. So he set out to write a novel for the front-row sleepers and back-row dreamers of his classrooms. He hopes that his former students see themselves, vibrant and on the page, in characters like Emmett.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
