A complex story with a good setting. However, I couldn't get over the fact the main character has no personality, and a drawn-out plot.

Plot
The book started with a good prologue and premise, but quickly became a long drawn-out affair with no end in sight. Okay, people getting killed in the American Frontier by wizards? Cool. Linda saving Jack's life by getting Dr. Longbranch to put a Weirstone in him? Cool. But the filler in between plot points, ex. Jack going to high school, training with wizard Leander Hastings, hanging around Hastings's house near Raven's Ghyll? Not interesting. I didn't have an objection to the events in the plot, just the fact it took so long for it to get anywhere.

In addition, it isn't that original of a story to begin with. Okay, so some nice guy, let's call him Joe, is special from birth, but he doesn't know his specialness. Joe grows up like a normal person until he discovers the *gasp* magical world of wizards/unicorns/fairies/vampires etc. But Joe has no clue what to do. In comes his mentor! Mr. Mentor teaches Joe how to wield his specialness, in the world of wizards/unicorns/fairies/vampires, and Joe goes on a Mission: Impossible- like quest and saves the world from some kind of evil. The end! This storyline, which has been used from ancient myths, can be researched by doing the simple act of Googling "the hero's journey."

Characters
Jack is our everyman MC. That is, he has about as much personality as a doormat. He's just our typical nice guy in a small town with good friends and a nice personality, the kind of person who rescues puppies and that kind of thing. Nothing new. He doesn't seem to have much emotion and only reacts the way any human being on the planet with half a brain would. Plus, the way he reacts to a female opponent,

Spoiler

Ellen

, it makes him seem sexist, because he says he doesn't want to kill a girl or anything like that, which makes it seem like girls are to be pitied and deserve less respect on the battlefield than men.

The novel would be darker and deeper if written from

Spoiler

Ellen's

perspective, given her emotional baggage and borderline-abusive upbringing. She also has a lot more personality.

Hastings, Linda, even Fitch and Will, were more interesting than our MC.

Setting
The author did a pretty good job with world building. I liked the complex, backstabbing world of the Roses, but didn't like how it was set up. Historically, it's inaccurate to think that the War of the Roses was carried on in secret centuries after the actual fighting ended.

I might read the rest of the series to see if it gets better.