Brief Synopsis
“The Marvellers” is Dhonielle Clayton’s middle-grade debut set in a magical world. Ella Durand is an 11 year-old Conjuror, the first allowed to attend Arcanum Training Institute, which previously was only open to Marvellers. With tensions rising, she’ll have to navigate a strange new world of rules and magic…
Content Warnings: Violence (PG), Discrimination, Bullying
What Do I Think?
Note: I was provided an ARC of this novel at the North Texas Teen Book Festival.
“The Marvellers” is a book with a number of strengths: it brings us fascinating, creative magical systems, a world full of life and history that feels like a natural fit for said magic system, and characters who are engaging to read about.
Unfortunately, it is also a novel with a number of weaknesses.
Let’s start with the most prevalent: the worldbuilding. Now, once the story gets going, it is incredibly easy to become lost in the magic of this world, an alternate Earth with just enough similarities to our own to seem somewhat familiar. But it is unfortunately one that is very complicated, with not just one but two magic systems: Conjuring and Marvelling.
Marvelling, at least, is described in some detail, which makes sense given the nature of the story (I mean, the title is literally “The Marvellers”, after all). But even so, there are still many questions left by the end of this book that feel like they should have been answered: what does it mean if someone steals someone else’s Marvel? How does having two Marvels even work?
Conjuring is described with even less detail, which is unfortunate since the main character, Ella Durand, is herself a Conjurer from a long line of them. Why exactly Marvellers stand at the top of society why Conjurers are looked down upon is unclear, as is what the difference between the two magic systems.
In addition to how complicated the magic systems are, the rest of the worldbuilding results in what can best be described as a sluggish pace. The plot often takes a backseat as Clayton goes on to describe fine details of her world, such as food or creatures that end up having no real bearing on the story, and it results in a pacing that is uneven and awkward. When the plot does get going, boy howdy does it get going. But there are so many long pauses and breaks in between that it is easy to forget what exactly we’re supposed to be caring about.
Some of this, I feel, is due to the very forced nature of the plot’s timing: like many magic-school books, this story is set over the course of Ella’s first year at Arcanum Training Institute. Yet important parts of the plot don’t mesh with the slower nature of this kind of story: a prisoner breaks out of the Underworld (which it’s never really explained how that exists in this world), and then it takes…2-3 months for them to do anything? The heroes find out that their beloved teacher is missing in January, but don’t really do anything about it until May. A student accuses Ella of harming her in December but doesn’t bother to report it until May. Much of the story feels like it is standing in place – the characters don’t necessarily grow much during these intervening months, and yet the time has passed regardless.
In the end, “The Marvellers” is a book with a lot of promise, certainly with the ambition of setting up a stellar series, but it falls somewhat flat when it is crippled by awkward pacing, maybe-too-detailed worldbuilding, the very nature of its own type of narrative.
Jacob Ryckman 