{Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:
Astra Academy Series by Shami Stovall
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
I picked up a trade paperback copy of Shami Stovall's first Astra Academy Series, Academy Arcanist, from a used bookstore. Even from just the back cover blurb, I had a pretty good idea that it was going to be a Harry Potter series knockoff. The premise of Astra Academy is a school full of arcanists (witches and wizards) who have to bond with a mystical creature, called an eldrin, in order to really tap into their magical potential. (Gee, can you say Patronus anyone?)
The main character is Gray Lexly. Gray has a hugely muscular twin brother named Sorin who loves to make up his own poetry extemporaneously. Sorin is also a wizard in the making. Later, Sorin gets a witch girlfriend named Hermione. Okay, her name is actually Nini--but Victor Krum calls Hermione "Hermy-own" in the HP series and that kind of sounds like minny, ninny. All the Eldrin creatures are different with various types and degrees of power. All this is exciting, only Voldemort wants to break free and take over the world. Wait, I mean, Death Lord Deimos wants to break free from the abyssal hells--where the dead live. For some reason, only first-year student Harry…um, I mean, only Gray and his small band of misfit friends can defeat this evil.
This is actually just the start of all the endless connections I made with the HP series while I was reading Astra Academy. The sheer number of parallels became so overwhelming, I sometimes felt hit over the head with them. Just when it seemed like the series might set itself apart from its predecessor, the reader is held down and kicked with "Do-you-see-the-similarities-now?" driving-force boots.
Does this make the series any less compelling? I'm not a hundred percent sure how to answer that, but I'll try to make some sense of this conundrum in the latter part of this review. I will say for sure that if I hadn't found Books 2-4 in audiobook format on my library app, I wouldn't have continued the series beyond Book 1 (as I didn't want to pay to read this particular series--the vow I started last year was to only put out cash for books I've actually read and loved instead of buying anything that vaguely sounds like something I'd like). The audiobooks were lively and fun and kept me coming back for more. They were all immediately available to me for checkout on Hoopla (none of them were available on my Libby library app in audio- or ebook format). When I went searching for Book 5, I found out it wasn't coming out until a later time (luckily, the library app did get a copy of the audiobook when it became available). That forced a lag between Books 1-4 and the final in the series. Fortunately, I remembered everything necessary without having to go backward, as it was only a few months I had to wait. Oh, how I dislike starting a series when all the books in it aren't out yet. Add insult to injury because libraries tend to be hit-and-miss in regards to making sure all series books are available. Again, I got lucky and they did get this one (though I'm still waiting for a final in another of Stovall's other series, which I'll review next week).I was really glad to get closure with this series.
Additionally, while I was undertaking more research on this series, I found out that Astra Academy is also just one of a subseries with other connected series. Per my usual modus operandi, I'd jumped into this "umbrella" series (which doesn't have an overall name that I'm aware of) in the wrong place, as this was not the first series in technical reading order. At least, I don't think it is. Ugh! Here's what I dug up:
Frith Chronicles Books (with 8 novels
and a collection of shorts) features a gravedigger who becomes an arcanist with
a knightmare--a Eldrin made of shadow and terror--the very same mystical
creature that becomes Sorin's Eldrin in Astra Academy. These books were
published between 2019-2023. 
The Kirin Arcanist Books were novels
written with Ryan Tang. So there's a tournament that arcanists from around the
world can participate in with the prize being that the one who gets the crown
also gets turned into a powerful god-like arcanist. Pretty cool, right? These
books were published between 2023-2025. The suggested reading order of these connected series is very unclear, so I'm going to guess, based on the publication dates, that Frith comes first, followed by Astra Academy, and finally Kirin Arcanist. As to what the chronological order should be, the author should have put more specific information about all this on her website, but there's nothing there (all the series are all plunked on the pages in willy-nilly fashion--don't expect any help sorting this mess out there). I did find more in-depth information about the author's many series on Fandom Wiki (in the search bar here, put "Shami Stovall" to see a listing). If someone spent hours upon hours or was already a widely entrenched fan of this author, I'm sure they'd find whatever they were looking for here. But my point is that brand new fans are left in the dark, dense woods about where to jump into all this. I didn't really want to go deep diving for it, so I'm sorry to say that, if you're new to Shami Stovall's series, you'll have to lump it and blind-plunge in just as I did.
Now that we've established…not much of anything useful with what proceeded, let's have some summary of the five Astra Academy books:
Academy Arcanist, Book 1 (published in 2022), opens with Gray plagued by terrible nightmares where he's visited by monsters in a dreamscape and they can actually injure him. He wakes up with real wounds. His parents think he fell out of bed, but his twin Sorin believes him and tries to help him. He's eventually saved from death within the nightmare by Professor Helmith, who tells him she's a powerful arcanist and she invites him to attend Astra Academy. Gray becomes a mimic arcanist, his Eldrin Twain (whose permanent form is an adorable kitty cat) can take the form and power of any other mystical creature nearby). Once Gray and Sorin are established in the school, the plot heads down the road so Professor Helmith is in trouble because a traitorous professor (no, not Quirrell) is in league with an evil Death Lord that wants to escape the abyssal hells, opens a portal, and Gray, who's a brand-new arcanist and green as algae, somehow is the only person who can save the day. Well, temporarily anyway.
Mimic Arcanist, Book 2 (2023) has Gray, Sorin, and their fellow student "company" hoping to focus on studying and honing their new magics at the academy. But Gray finds a horcrux…I mean, a fragment of the portal he'd closed in Book 1 that allows abyssal hell's monsters into the world of the living. Now Gray's group and the academy need to find all those rogue fragments. But, before they can, Chief Death Eater Vold…{cough} Death Lord Deimos arrives in the mortal world, and Gray once more has to save everybody.
Abyssal Arcanist, Book 3 (2023) revolves around treasonous arcanists within the academy plotting to destroy the school. Deimos has been trapped in an itty bitty baby's body and has to be fed by bottle and carried around everywhere… No, that's not right. He was actually he was trapped in a dreamscape by Professor Helmith. But Voldemort and Harry are connected by the horcruxes, and Ron, and Hermoine are standing right there beside their friend-- That is to say, Gray and Deimos are connected by soul fragments, and, instead of the teachers at the academy doing the heavy lifting, it's up to wet-behind-the-ears Gray, Sorin, Nini and their other unpopular friends to clean up this mess.
In Death Lord Arcanist, Book 4 (2024), Harry is trapped in a hedge maze that teleports him to a graveyard where Voldemort and his Death Eaters are waiting… Nope, got bludgeoned again, but I'm all right. It's Gray that's trapped in the abyssal hells and Death Lord Deimos--who is now not a friend but also not an enemy--is injured. Another Death Lord (Naiad) wants to destroy all other Death Lords who are trying to open abyssal portals into the world of the living. Gray shortsightedly teams up with Deimos to fix it and, well, that can't lead to anything good, can it?
The latest installment in this subseries, Labyrinth Arcanist, Book 5 (2025), details the final confrontation between the juvenile arcanist superheroes (and some of their occasionally half-witted teachers) and Death Lord arcanists from the abyssal hells. Right from the start, I was pretty sure who would win (against all odds). I will note that I don't believe this is the final offering in the series. It ended on a cliffhanger, with Gray pointing out that they still had to defeat the remaining Death Lords. So I expect there will be more to follow.
While I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of Gray Lexly in these books--he's a pompous character who unfortunately almost always gets exactly what he wants, which sets a bad precedent. (I did love Harry Potter and all his friends. Just saying.) Gray seems to think everyone around him is stupid, though occasionally he has good thoughts for the weak, pitiful mortals he looks down upon and graces with his sympathy. Sorin was a more interesting character, and Twain was cutely fun. I also really liked that the villain of this series, Deimos, wasn't straight-up evil. While the reader was aware he was always acting in his own best interests, he, like Voldemort, was a complicated character with a backstory, internal and external conflicts, and motivations that made him intriguing.
Each book in the series was rollicking good fun, especially read by Michael Langan in the audiobook versions, which had me coming back nearly every day for more. There was always something happening, providing pretty much constant tension. The characters were basically well-drawn while the settings were interesting. In a general way, I'd say I actually liked this series. My big problem was that I couldn't escape the feeling that this was all taking place within a world created by someone else. The author inserted her characters, settings, and plots into it, then spun all her "like series" out from there. In many ways, I would call what she's done here "fan fiction". I looked up the definition of this word. AI gave me the gist of it as: "Fanfic…is creative writing that allows fans to explore their favorite universes and characters in new ways, often expanding on scenarios not covered in the original material." So, yeah, seems like maybe could be fanfic???
Polite people might also say artists use "tropes", which offer something so conventional in the plot or theme, etc., that it becomes recognizable almost in a single glance or within a few sentences. But at what point does it become something, well, nefarious? Is it weird for me to be bothered by this? I would absolutely hate it if someone took my characters or worlds and wrote something of their own based on them--especially if it's intended to mock my work. Even if it's actually supposed to be a compliment they liked your work so much that they're emulating it, this seems to be skirting a wider issue that's become so commonplace these days, no one seems bothered by it anymore. No one, that is, except me and a few other curmudgeonly ancients.
Bottom line, Stovall is a good writer and certainly a prolific one. I also can't be too hard on 1) any writer who's obsessed with playing videogames (as I am), 2) whose favorite videogame is Mass Effect (as is mine)--and Stovall's The Star Marque Trilogy book covers could definitely be both male and female Shepherd, straight from the character creation menu in the videogame--and, as if those weren't enough, 3) someone whose favorite book as a child was The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (mine as well). I'm giving this author a pass because the fact of the matter is that I just plain enjoy her work too much to avoid it, despite my possibly outdated principles.
Neither of my library apps have any more of Stovall's work available for me to check out other than the first audiobook in another of her "fanfic" series, which, I don't deny, had me hooked. As I said, you'll see the review of it on the Alien Romances Blog next Friday.
In conclusion, if you
want something familiar and adventurous to pass the time, these audiobooks
should give you hours of enjoyment…and, you know, also make you want to dust
off some true "oldies but goodies" by revisiting Hogwarts, Harry,
Ron, and Hermoine just for old times' sake.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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