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A review by thebookberrie
Spellhacker by M.K. England
Think about this: you're singing along to a song you don't know all the words to so you mumble through half of it just to shout out the words you do know. This book is exactly like that. It feels like the author had one idea and then shouted that idea and just bullshitted through the rest of the story. This was all just so badly done.
Spellhacker is about Diz who runs an illegal siphoning job on the side with her three best friends. Magic -otherwise known as maz- used to be freely available until an earthquake and a magical plague happened, killing thousands and letting a greedy corporation take over control of the resource. When their last job goes wrong, they stumble across a maz conspiracy and have to save the world.
The idea of this book is really cool and I loved how diverse and queer it is but that's all this book was?? Maybe it should have focused more on the romance instead whatever hell else was going on because damn. The entire plot and magic system just felt like spaghetti noodles.
The magic system felt barely explained and all around ??? It didn't make any sense and was such nonsense. Not everyone could use it and there were different levels for whatever reason and everyone was just like, that's fine?? The magic wasn't even impressive to me. It just felt like a super convenient way to make this book work. (lol it did not work.)
I love heist stories but this one was yikes. The execution was SO bad and nothing was unique at all. The entire plot happens because the MC, Diz is super selfish and then she spends the rest of the book just being lowkey awful. The romance with a non-binary character that has an illness was cute but their relationship felt so forced.
Besides Diz being selfish, she's so damn annoying and the book spends so much time saying how smart she is but I never actually felt that?? She has three best friends but I couldn't tell you their names or any other character names for shit because of how basic they all were. Did I tell you how ANNOYING AND WHINY Diz was yet? It had to be repeated.
The setting was just... another pot of spaghetti noodles. It was so vague and sci-fi, mentioning drones and all this other fun stuff but it did nothing for me. The heist was so bad oh my god. Of course this follows the same ~oh no the heist went bad~ plotline that all heist stories tend to do but this one felt extra unoriginal, even with the sci-fi set dressing and all the gays vibing.
Someone even betrays them in classic fashion and once you start reading you'll instantly know who so what was the point? The big bad was such a joke too and the entire thing felt so weak, like none of this even had to happen at all.
SPELLHACKER, sounds so fucking badass yeah? It wasn't badass at all and I'm mad about that and the wasted potential. This is the second book by this author I've hated and it sucks but I'm not going back for round three even if the cover is nice.
Spellhacker is about Diz who runs an illegal siphoning job on the side with her three best friends. Magic -otherwise known as maz- used to be freely available until an earthquake and a magical plague happened, killing thousands and letting a greedy corporation take over control of the resource. When their last job goes wrong, they stumble across a maz conspiracy and have to save the world.
The idea of this book is really cool and I loved how diverse and queer it is but that's all this book was?? Maybe it should have focused more on the romance instead whatever hell else was going on because damn. The entire plot and magic system just felt like spaghetti noodles.
The magic system felt barely explained and all around ??? It didn't make any sense and was such nonsense. Not everyone could use it and there were different levels for whatever reason and everyone was just like, that's fine?? The magic wasn't even impressive to me. It just felt like a super convenient way to make this book work. (lol it did not work.)
I love heist stories but this one was yikes. The execution was SO bad and nothing was unique at all. The entire plot happens because the MC, Diz is super selfish and then she spends the rest of the book just being lowkey awful. The romance with a non-binary character that has an illness was cute but their relationship felt so forced.
Besides Diz being selfish, she's so damn annoying and the book spends so much time saying how smart she is but I never actually felt that?? She has three best friends but I couldn't tell you their names or any other character names for shit because of how basic they all were. Did I tell you how ANNOYING AND WHINY Diz was yet? It had to be repeated.
The setting was just... another pot of spaghetti noodles. It was so vague and sci-fi, mentioning drones and all this other fun stuff but it did nothing for me. The heist was so bad oh my god. Of course this follows the same ~oh no the heist went bad~ plotline that all heist stories tend to do but this one felt extra unoriginal, even with the sci-fi set dressing and all the gays vibing.
Someone even betrays them in classic fashion and once you start reading you'll instantly know who so what was the point? The big bad was such a joke too and the entire thing felt so weak, like none of this even had to happen at all.
SPELLHACKER, sounds so fucking badass yeah? It wasn't badass at all and I'm mad about that and the wasted potential. This is the second book by this author I've hated and it sucks but I'm not going back for round three even if the cover is nice.