This book proves that Brandon Sanderson is not infallible. 
 It was a 10 hour Audio book and I did NOT begin to enjoy it at all until the last hour and a half. I don't mean to be unduly harsh, I am just stating it as I see it. The last hour and a half was mildly intriguing but the last 20 minutes actually had me smiling and even cheering. So it wasn't a total loss. 
 What I didn't like about it: 
 The main character 
 He was bland and irritating. Why do I feel that way? Well, for one he is given free tuition to one of THE most prestigious schools ever and is even described as being brilliant but instead of applying himself to do the minimum requirements he chooses to ignore them and in turn fails at least one class a year like an idiot. That was enough to make him really unlikable. I get that he has his passions and that there is deep frustration because he can't ever join in Rithmatic studies but to be such an airhead as to screw up classes so badly that he fails at least one ever single year and he doesn't even seem to care. Then later even intentionally fails a class. It made him so one denominational/ Another reason why I thought Joel was bland and irritating was the fact that he sees that even though his mother works herself to the bone they have no money and yet as a completely brilliant child who is described as loving his mother and wanting her to take more days off and so on, lazes about daydreaming and failing classes and never once thinks about getting a job to help his mom so she doesn't have to work so hard? At this point he feels so self adsorbed it was hard to feel anything but contempt for his complaints and issues. He only begins to seem at all interesting when (view spoiler)[the chalklings show up on campus and chase him (hide spoiler)] 
 The worldbuilding 
 I know Sanderson is known for his worldbuilding but, in my opinion, he failed in that department with this book. I was never really able to get a good grasp on the world that he was trying to create. I get that it was basically the us but all the states were split into islands but beyond that it felt so...slippery. It was maybe the 1920's but maybe not. The money had gears in it, which made no sense and wasn't described well, and they used pens but they also used quills and there were no camera's to take photos of the crime scenes but there were steampunk type gadgets like lawn crabs, mechanical horses, lamps that were wound up and trains that had tracks in the sky. What?! The things Sanderson chose to do with his world and the things he left out seemed to have no rhyme or reason to them. Also, I know this is a little thing, but the names he gave to some of the islands of America made me roll my eyes and he nearly lost me with Georgiabama. I do understand that this is a Mid Grade instead of a true YA but even so....Georgiabama? 
 Last but not least.... 
 The Conversation tags 
 I know this is a hot topic for a lot of writing professionals but as someone who primarily listens to her books instead of reading them the fact that Sanderson used said, asked, or whispered for ALL of his conversation tags made the dialogue become so tedious. I am not asking for something different every time someone says something but COME ON! Like I said earlier I know that a lot of writing professionals say that having the simplest tags after dialogue like said or asked makes the tags vanish for readers and hence are less distracting. This may be true for some but it makes things really boring for others. 
 Ok this is really the last :p 
 The Narration 
 Michael Kramer thankfully did not fall pray to what I consider is the cardinal sin of narration. That sin is the lack of pitch and accent change for different characters. As thankful as I was that Kramer rose above that particular sin I did not enjoy his voice.