Fascinating. Goodreads says that I read this ten years ago, which I don't remember at all. I guess that says something about the impression it left on me. I hate reviewing old fantasy, because I feel guilty saying that this has been done one hundred times before and better, knowing that Obernewtyn may well have been one of the first instantiations.
Nonetheless, there is nothing original for the modern reader - society got too advanced, set off a nuclear weapon, destroyed society back to medieval times; some people were mutated and therefore have magic (every bone in my geneticist body is twitching to point out how very unrealistic this is in several ways, but I'll defer); one girl is The Special-ist and she Will Save the World with the help of her Magic Cat and the Ruggedly Handsome and Terse, but Ultimately Loving Love Interest. Along the way, we will be "surprised" to know that civilization was destroyed by itself and the nuclear war. Her friends, of course, involve the Boy Who is Super Magic to compensate for his Blindness and The Boy Who Mopes after his Dead Girlfriend, the Very Delicate sacrificial lamb. Sorry, if I want a post-apocalyptic fantasy world with strong, yet loving female characters and brusque but lovable male love interests, I'll go back to reading [a:Sharon Shinn|28544|Sharon Shinn|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1218995575p2/28544.jpg] ( )

Well this was an oddly compelling little read.

Despite the lack of character development, or world building, or explanations of mysterious capabilities that people had, I weirdly still enjoyed this. It is quite short so there was definitely room to flesh things out a bit more. And guess what! There are animals that the main character can talk to! Another animal book in my booktalk repertoire. ( )

This is a book that I was really looking forward to and it turned out to be a great disappointment. The premise has all the things I like-- a dystopian post-apocalyptic world where science and knowledge has crumbled and people struggle to cobble together an existence, humans discovering their newly-developing supernatural powers, conspiracies and the search for truth, even talking animals... I see so much potential in this series but I was really let down by the author's writing.

One of the cardinal rules of writing is tell, not show. Now, there are plenty of books I've read that break this rule quite a bit and I still enjoyed them but this particular book isn't one of them. Instead of giving us the actual scenes wherein important information is revealed or important conversations occur, we are simply told afterward that this or that happened or so-and-so had a talk and said these things. It meant that there was very little action in the book because we're just given a summary of what happened only after it occurred. This made for such an incredibly frustrating and boring read and I no longer feel interested in the series. ( )

LOVED this book! Scary, but not too scary...
( )

The re-naming common objects thing is very very 80's, and since that isn't in style anymore, dates the book a lot. Other than that it's a decent book, pretty simple, not going to be a lot of surprises here. Aimed at a younger audience. ( )