Review: Where Dreams Descend Janella Angeles

Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC via Edelweiss+ in exchange for an honest review.  

This is a solid debut novel and I very much enjoyed it.  Angeles' writing is beautiful, and the premise is really intriguing.  Our main character Kallia is a magician who is fairly powerful, and she performs with the grace and mystery of a Moulin Rouge dancer.  She lives and trains with Jack, another powerful magician, who is secretive and mysterious, and happens to be the proprietor of the Hellfire House where Kallia performs.   Anytime Kallia questions what lies beyond Hellfire House in the nearby city of Glorian, Jack quickly shuts her down which only makes her more curious.  Kallia hears of a magical competition in Glorian, and she is determined to win and see more of the world for herself.  When she gets to Glorian, she is not met with the welcome she expects for a magician such as herself.  There is in fact a magicians competition, but suspicious things keeps happening and as the only female magician fingers are always pointing at Kallia.  The longer the competition goes on, more strange and sinister things happen.  Unfortunately we don't get much of an explanation as to what was happening in an around the strange town of Glorian.

I would have liked a better explanation of the magic system.  Some magician are born with magic and some have obtained magic, but that never really is explained.  Mirrors play a significant role in the magic of the world, but how they work and why is not explained.  I really would have liked a clear explanation of how the magic system works and why certain characters and events were important.  I believe the ending has set us up to explain more in the next book, but I really don't like it when you are left with more questions than answers in a single book in a series.  This book is fairly long, but leaves us with far too many questions unanswered.  

I'm looking forward to finding out what happens in the next book and more about the characters, the magic, and hopefully more will be revealed.

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