Love the freebie table. This one and book two in the series were there and I decided to give them a spin. They are definitely written for young readers - the hero is ten or eleven years old. They seem to be an attempt to cash in on the success of the Harry Potter series. There are a few twists, but essentially a young boy is discovered to have magical gifts and is sent to a special school for training. The first of these came out in 2002 and the first Harry Potter book was released in 1997.
The parallels to Harry Potter make comparison inevitable and this book does not fare well in that comparison. It isn't bad, it is entertaining and I will read the second, but it simply doesn't have the flare that makes Harry Potter so engaging. However, this was definitely better than the book that I read from the Suzanne Collins series for young readers that predated The Hunger Games. Don't bother to go there.
As I said, I plan to go ahead and read the second book, but I expect I will return them to the table after that.
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