By James Riley

If you think your life is messed up, then just consider the life of this book’s main character. First of all, his name. Fort Fitzgerald. Poor boy. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he gets teased about it. By his dad.

Oh yeah, his mom’s dead too.

Oooo, and you know what happens next? Fort’s dad disappears on vacation in DC when a giant monster erupts from the earth and destroys the majority of the national mall. Goodreads calls Fort devastated. I would call him shell-shocked, traumatized, depressed, and severely in need of lots of hugs. Instead, he gets the next best thing.

Justice (or revenge – it’s kind of interchangeable).

Because what would you do if you were recruited to a school that promised to teach you magic powerful enough to stop the monsters that hurt your father forever? What would you do if the government itself was telling you that this was your chance to make things right? You would take that opportunity and go to that school.

So Fort does exactly that. He goes to the Oppenheimer School to learn magic.

Now it’s important to point out that although this is a book about kids learning magic to defend the world, it explains it in a way that is very different than many other wishy-washy books do. Magic was discovered 13 years ago, and only those born after that date can use it. Therefore, only children can do magic. How are they taught it? Well, that’s too much to go into here.

Anyway, Fort goes to school, but he realizes it’s going to be a lot harder to get revenge – I mean justice – than he thought. In the first place, he might not even make it through the first two weeks. The people there are a bit, well, what should I say? Odd? Terrifying? Dangerous? And there are a lot of secrets he is definitely not supposed to learn about.

General Stats:

• Genre: Fantasy
• Book 1 of 5
• Age: 5th grade and above
• My rating: ★★★★☆