Remembering Majyk by Valia Lind

Title: Remembering Majyk (The Shazka Chronicles #1)

Author: Valia Lind

Publisher: Victory Editing NetGalley Co-Op

Publish Date: January 18, 2018

Genre(s): YA, Fantasy

***This book was provided by NetGalley and Victory Editing in exchange for my honest review***

Please bear with me, it’s difficult to write a review for this book without giving anything away. Let me start out by saying, I should have known what I was getting myself into, “Remembering Majyk” should have been a dead giveaway that the entire book is the main character trying to remember her past memories as a Volshebnitsya (to put it simply a strong majykal being). It is Calista’s duty as both a Duchess and a Volshebnitsya to save the High Realm of Skazka from the Glava (the masters of Shadowlands). It’s the classic fantasy trope - the villains want to take control of the realm so they can have all the power.

That’s all fine and dandy, but the concept that Calista lost her memories due to traveling from her own realm to the human realm made no sense to me. The Glava and her allies (Brendan and Maxwell) had no trouble transporting from one realm to the next, so why exactly did Calista have such an issue? That problem kind of bugged me as a reader. I’ll admit I enjoyed the idea of the story-line in this novel, but it just seemed as if there were some holes in the plot that didn’t make sense to me.

I loved that the author didn’t dive right into Calista and Brendan’s romantic relationship right away. I really enjoy a good fantasy romance plot in a book, but I didn’t like that the author kind of went on and on with it until the end of the story. There was a lot of back and forth emotions between Calista and Brendan that it started to irritate me. You have to have some kind of give for the reader to hook onto or they just won’t enjoy the story as much.

I did like the idea that this book was somewhat original in its creatures that gave me the idea of frankenstein in a way. I also liked the twist at the end of the book regarding the relationship between Calista and Brendan - I just didn’t like the way the author wrote their interactions between the middle and end of the story.

The plot had me also confused as to the true nature of Calista or her personality before she lost memory of who she was. Obviously she remembers everything that happened before the memory loss, but it’s still up in the air as to whether she was double crossing the High Realm of Skazka or if she was working as some majykal secret double agent. I’m still unsure of how that worked. Or maybe it’s just me? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated finally getting some memories and thoughts of who she was before with regard to her family and other relationships, though I feel that maybe there should have been a little more other information included. Although, the author may have done this intentionally due to the fact that there is a sequel for this series which I think will show more promising for the structure of the story because it didn’t completely agree with me in this first book.

I’m going to rate this book 3 out of 5 stars due to the writer’s ability to make me want to know what happens next in the story and so I can learn more about the characters. Otherwise, I probably would have rated at 2.5, but I’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt. Will I be putting the next novel on my TBR? It’s hard to say, it’s a possibility that I will if I come across the series again in Netgalley or in a bookstore.