My son read this book and told me it was great and I gotta read it. Which is what I did and to be honest, I liked it but that's about it. Don't get me wrong, the writing is great and I liked some of the characters. But at times it seemed I was missing info which is probably because some things were from the main series - I thought this was a new standalone series but it is in fact a sort of continuation of Septimus Heap. Overall, I enjoyed it.