This book has magic, 3 friends, a snarky bully, a magical school with a cryptic teacher and of course lets not forget the great 'enemy' who started the great war 12 years ago that know one has seen him since, Sound familiar? 
 (view spoiler)[The only thing original about this book was the 1 plot twist with the characters. That Call isn't the 'chosen one'. I personally don't have a problem with the 'chosen one' in stories as long as it's done right and the stories interesting then its fine with me. I've never read a book following our chosen one protagonist along and started to think 'hey this would be way more interesting from the quirky friends POV.' 
 I found myself wishing it was from Aarons POV, wanting to know more about his upbringing in foster homes but Holly black and Cassandra Clare wanted to be 'different' and change it up! unfortunatly it didn't work for me. 
 I have big problems with Call our main character. Lets start off with his name; "Callum, nice name what should we give him as a nick name?" "I know Cal, that's nice and short" "oh why don't we try (and fail) at making it different and leaving the doubles L's on." 
 I was trying to say Cal in my head but I just kept reading his name as call and it was annoying me! There is a line in there somewhere to the likes of "Call, Aaron" 
 I was just reading this as someone should call Aaron (yes there are capitals and a comma but tell but that to my inner narrator) 
 Second problem- Call has been bullied and picked on for years, had bowls of food dump on his head at lunch time and been really upset about it as you would be. You would think he'd be sympathetic to his bully being bullied even if he doesn't like him or he could at least not openly enjoy it and laugh, I would of loved it if he stopped his friends and was the bigger man. Jared (bully) saves Call from his own stupidity and doesn't so much as receive any gratitude THEN Jared come at the end gives him some food, says congratulations, apologizes and Call just doesn't appreciate it, throws the food away what a mean kid was all I could think. 
 The world building was as okay as you can be in an underground tunnel city. I really liked the elementrials and how they came to be, the descriptions of the caves and stalactites everywhere. 
 The food descriptions were fun and different was very repetitive! I was sick of hearing of the purple goop that tasted like steak and the crystal cookies that sounded like breaking glass when you bit in to them. Funky food I get it can we move on to some action or classes? (hide spoiler)] 
 Final thoughts the characters were underdeveloped and I was not invested in any of them, the plot twist wasn't that interesting and a lot of things annoyed me, positives are it was entertaining and if I wasn't so annoyed with the POV I may have picked up the next book.