Zodiac Academy: The Awakening | Welcome to Solaria. Everybody Sucks.

🏰 Welcome to Solaria. Hope you didn’t have any other plans.

Tory and Darcy Vega discover that the world they grew up in isn’t the only one out there and that, in Solaria, they’re far more important than they ever imagined. And just like that, with a little stardust, a dark and sexy visitor, and a decision based on the sound reasoning of “How bad could it possibly be?”, we end up at Zodiac Academy.

Here, we’re greeted by magic, the four Houses, the elements, Orders, powerful families, social hierarchies, political conflicts, and four Celestial Heirs who seem to have confused their right to the throne with the right to be complete assholes.

And this is just the begining!

Solaria unfolds before the reader like a spiderweb. Every thread leads to another. Every character seems connected to other characters, other conflicts, other agendas. Every rule opens up a new path. And before you can make sense of one, three more appear.

It’s fascinating, exhausting, and sometimes downright exasperating.

But dear God, the potential this world has!

🕸️ Worldbuilding: When imagination has no concept of restraint

I have to admit, the authors have created something impressive.

Solaria isn’t just a magical academy where a handful of attractive characters, a conveniently designed magic system, and some romantic drama have been thrown together to give BookTok something to hype. It’s an entire society, complete with rules, traditions, hierarchies, prejudices, power struggles, and a social structure that shapes the characters’ behavior..

It’s a world that operates by its own rules, and that’s precisely where one of the book’s greatest strengths lies, but also one of its biggest problems.

A world this vast can’t be built in three pages.

I understand that. I accept that.

But there’s a considerable difference between discovering a world and being buried under an avalanche of information about it. I lost track of things more than once. So many times, in fact, that at 75%, I decided I had to start over just to understand what was going on, who was who, and why I should even care.

Not exactly a glowing endorsement of the book’s pacing. But the fact that I was willing to do it says something important.

This world exhausted me, but it never made me lose interest.

And to me, that makes a world of difference.

👑 Solaria: a society full of absolutely detestable people. Well Done, Ladies!

This is probably what impressed me the most.

With exceptions so few and far between that they’re barely worth mentioning, the authors have created a world populated by utterly insufferable characters: arrogant, cruel, selfish, and obsessed with power, status, and superiority. And I’m not just talking about the four Heirs. I’m talking about Solaria’s overall atmosphere: how characters interact, how they wield their power, and how casually they accept the humiliation of those they consider beneath them.

I hated almost everyone. And I loved that.

Because, as far as I’m concerned, that’s what good writing looks like.

I don’t need characters to be likable. I don’t need to approve of their behavior or make excuses for them. I need them to be believable within the world they inhabit. And the authors have managed to create not just a handful of detestable characters, but an entire society where arrogance and cruelty seem to be the natural consequences of the system itself.

We don’t have four bad boys thrown into an academy full of decent people. We have a society that actively breeds and rewards exactly this kind of behavior.

Solaria isn’t just the backdrop of the story. Solaria is part of the problem.

And I find that far more interesting than yet another brooding bad boy with a traumatic past and ridiculously gorgeous eyes.

🐍 The Four Celestial Heirs: four excellent reasons to stay away from the academy.

Darius, Caleb, Seth and Max.

Four heirs to power, four different personalities, and one shared talent for turning the twins’ lives into a living nightmare. They’re arrogant, aggressive, privileged, and utterly convinced that their status gives them the right to do pretty much whatever they please. And yet, I didn’t find them poorly written. Quite the opposite. They made me want to understand what lies behind their behavior. What drives them, and what binds them together? How much of their cruelty comes from their own choices, and how much from being raised in a society that values power above everything else?

I don’t want four bad boys who magically turn into wonderful men the moment the right girl comes along. I want characters who are built with logic and consistency. I want motivations, choices, and consequences.

The first book doesn’t give me all of that, but it gives me enough hints to make me want to find out more.

And for now, I’m willing to accept that.

🔥 Tory and Darcy: welcome to a world where nobody wants ou

The twins arrive in Solaria without knowing the rules, understanding their powers, or having the slightest idea whom they can trust. And, of course, almost everyone seems determined to make it painfully clear that they’re not welcome.

I like that they’re not two perfect heroines. Discovering magic doesn’t automatically come with a certificate of universal competence. They have to learn, make mistakes, and adapt. I like their bond and the fact that, despite their different personalities, they keep supporting each other. But after an entire book, I can’t shake the feeling that they’ve spent more time trying to survive than actually growing as characters.

They’re attacked, they react, they defend themselves, they try to figure out what’s going on, and then the cycle repeats. I can understand why. I don’t expect them to conquer Solaria in their first week of school, but I’d like to see some actual progress beyond simply surviving.

Not necessarily spectacular victories. Just the sense that everything they’re going through is actually changing something.

✍️ The Writing: simple, fluid, and just sarcastic enough to keep me interested

Another thing I appreciated was the writing style. The authors write simply, clearly, and fluidly. No pretentious metaphors, no descriptions that drag on so long you forget what was happening before they started, and no desperate attempts to turn every sentence into a showcase of literary brilliance.

Thank God!

With so many characters and so much information to keep track of, the last thing I needed was prose that required translating into the very language it was written in. The dialogue works, the characters have distinct voices, and the humor is one of the book’s strongest points.

I particularly enjoyed the note addressed to students at the beginning. It gave me the impression that the authors know exactly what kind of world they’re building and aren’t afraid to poke fun at it. And in a book where almost everyone occasionally deserves to be hit with a heavy object, humor is absolutely essential.

📚 Zodiac Academy: a stepping stone important for romantasy?

Reading The Awakening, I felt something interesting. It was as if I were discovering, in a single book, so many of the themes I’ve since encountered in other fantasy and romantasy stories.

The magical academy, the hierarchies, rival groups, heirs to power, bullying, magic systems, complicated relationships, family secrets, political conflicts, and the struggle to survive in a society that refuses to accept you.
It’s all here, but none of it exists in isolation. Everything is interconnected within a much larger world.

No, Zodiac Academy didn’t invent fantasy. Or romantasy, for that matter. These genres existed long before the series. But I can’t help feeling that the series represents an important stepping stone in the development of this kind of literature. And, perhaps more importantly, in the way I’m discovering it as a reader. Because I recognize themes here that I’ve encountered in other books, often in much smaller, more superficial, and more forced versions.
A magical academy with no believable society surrounding it. A hierarchy that exists solely to justify yet another arrogant boy. A magic system that conveniently works wonders whenever the plot needs it to, or a conflict thrown into the story simply because that particular trope sells.

In The Awakening, at least, I get the sense that all these elements are part of something much bigger. at least, I get the sense that all these elements are part of something much bigger.

I can’t claim the series directly influenced every book where I recognize these themes, but after encountering so many pale imitations, it’s fascinating to discover a world where they’re developed on such an ambitious scale.

And that’s exactly what makes me want to keep reading.

🕸️ The Tapestry: we have all the threads. Where’s the pattern?

For me, a good story should be like a tapestry: characters, events, choices, motivations, and consequences. Every thread should contribute to the final pattern. I don’t care how many ideas an author manages to cram into a book. I care about what they actually do with them.

In The Awakening, the authors have laid out an impressive number of threads. Some are fascinating, others are frustrating, and many seem to lead in completely different directions. For now, I can’t see the pattern, but I don’t get the feeling these threads were thrown together at random, either. There’s a structure. There are connections. There’s the promise of a much bigger story.

The problem is that, for now, the promise is more impressive than the execution.

And I don’t give a book five stars for what I hope it might become.

🐌 The Pacing: my patience is considerable, but not infinite

The Awakening is, essentially, a very… long introduction to a very big world. And I can understand why it’s necessary.
You can’t build Solaria in a handful of chapters and then expect readers to understand its rules, conflicts, and complexities.

But the pacing remains a problem.

There’s so much to discover, yet the story feels like it takes only a few decisive steps forward. The questions pile up faster than the answers; the characters promise more than they reveal, and I keep reading, waiting to see what will become of all these possibilities.

I’m not saying nothing happens. I’m saying that, given how much information I have to process, the story’s actual progress is rather modest.

The book demands a great deal of my attention and patience. So far, what it mostly gives me are reasons to keep investing both.

Which is no small achievement, but it’s not enough for five stars, either.

⭐ Verdict: 3 Stars for a world I thoroughly enjoyed hating

I liked The Awakening. I really did.

I liked the world, too, even though it exhausted me so much that I had to start the book over when I was already 75% through. I liked the characters, even though almost all of them are absolutely insufferable. I liked the writing, the humor, and the authors’ ambition to create something far bigger than a love story set in a magical academy. But I wish the pacing had been better, the story had progressed more, and there had been a little more balance between the sheer amount of information thrown at me and the actual development of the plot.

I didn’t finish the book having fallen in love with any of the characters, nor did I close it feeling I’d just read something extraordinary. I finished it fascinated by the world I’d discovered and incredibly curious to see what the authors would do with it. And perhaps that’s the first book’s greatest achievement.

They managed to make me want to return to a world where I can’t stand almost anyone.

That takes talent.

3 stars.

For an impressive world, convincingly written detestable characters, and a story that’s still struggling to find its rhythm.

The remaining stars are still up for grabs.

Dear authors, impress me.