Due to copy and paste, formatting has been lost.The Circle of Tivedon was an imaginative novel, brimming with journeys and danger, as any good fantasy should be. A fantasy just isn't complete without a journey, don't you think? Anywho, back on subject. This book progressed nicely, and it was a quick read, but I did have a few problems with it.For one, it was to my understanding that this was a YA novel, not a MG novel, but it certainly reads more like middle-grade. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just think that it would make a bigger impact as MG. Why, you ask? Because most of the characters came off as juvenile. I had myself convinced through most of the book that all the main characters were 12-13 at most, but we find out later on that they're all late teens! (I'm assuming--Jayl has BEARD STUBBLE.)Also, towards the end of the book, it seems like all the characters start to mature, and then it becomes oh-so-obvious that they're a bit older than they appear at first glance. And that none of them trust each other. High fantasy at it's best.The atmosphere was remarkably well done! I really felt like I was being fully immersed into the fantasy world that Mr. Shorten had created, but I kind of thought that this book was a more modern, less long version of Lord of the Rings, with more school and less mythical creatures. Not confusing at all, RIGHT?On another note, I often found myself speed-reading to figure out what happened next, and then I would find that I didn't know how I'd gotten from one place to another--so yeah. All in all, I enjoyed The Circle of Tivedon, but I would've loved to have seen more character development and less skip-from-one-point-of-view-to-the-other syndrome. At one point, I had even forgotten that one of the characters existed! But I will be reading the next book in this series--I have to know what happens!*This book was provided by the author for an honest review.
