I don't have many (or maybe any) vigilante stories, so when I spotted The Thorn of Dentonhill's interesting cover-and the promise of wizards-I snatched it up. The set-up is so good but as the story goes on it just becomes predictable. 
 Veranix has devoted his life to being the thorn in Fenmere's side. Fenmere killed Veranix's father, addicted his mother to a drug called effitte, and now Fenmere has no idea Veranix is even alive, not to mention destroying his drug operation. 
 The book starts out so good! It's action packed, it's fast paced, Veranix's struggle between getting enough sleep for school or spending all night fighting drug lords is fun-it's all pretty fun in the beginning. The action scenes are well written and constantly moving. The introduction of street gangs, of the divide between the university students and everyone else, was interesting. But the characters absolutely can't carry the story in the second half and it crawls to a snail's pace. 
 Veranix, when he's not busting drug lords, is boring. He's the typical "Has too much power and doesn't know how to/can't use it properly" trope, and of course he's failing his classes. The mystery of his past is also typical. At this point it's nearly expected. There's just a small spin on it this time because we have a character who knows his past. He's intentionally lying about it, and it's nice that he doesn't immediately dump it all on the reader. We learn about his past when other characters do. But it doesn't help him avoid that Gary Stu territory. While it's nice that he does get beat up in his fights, he magically makes a great escape, or kills the person, and makes it home. Every time. 
 Colin was maybe the best character. He had more going for him than Veranix, being an orphan and captain of a street gang, and I started to wish the book would stop playing with the magic school idea and focus more on the street gangs. Colin was definitely more interesting-actually, all of the street gangs were more interesting than the little bits we got to see about the university! I can't even say why I enjoyed following Colin more than Veranix. Maybe it was Colin's level-head, his common sense, and the way he hustled for the information he needed or whatever needed done. Veranix just kind of had what he needed handed to him. 
 I just really wanted less magic school, more street gangs. 
 My biggest problem-besides Fenmere being an evil stereotype-was with Kaiana's character. She's the only woman in the entire book that actually speaks. The rest of the unnamed women mentioned in passing are drug-addicted whores, naturally. Veranix claims Kaiana is his friend, but really, she's just a tool for him. She keeps all of his gear, she treats his wounds, she takes the fall for him multiple times. There's no substance to her character besides "Plot convenience that helps Veranix" and there's never anything that proves otherwise. This book was published in 2015, not the 80s where these problems ran unchecked, so I really see no excuse for her horrible treatment. Oh wait, did I mention Kaiana is a WOC? 
 While the book started out great, and I loved the idea of Spiderman (there are a lot of comparisons to Batman, but Veranix definitely moves more like Spiderman) meets Harry Potter, I wanted to skip through a majority of the book to find Colin's next chapter or just get it all over with. It became boring and predictable. When the action went away, it was all on the characters to move the story and they just couldn't do it. Honestly, I can't even tell you how it ends. It was just... mediocre.