(Volumes 1-3)

The amount of violence and crime that goes on clashes with the school environment to an unbelievable level. The author tries to paint a setting where maybe anything goes for the sake of progressing magic, but fails to set any boundaries. You can't have students getting into a fight after class and getting detention, but then kidnapping and attempted murder by dissection gets a slap on the wrist. Are the rarely seen teachers providing any sort of order or not?

And no one dies despite how far the violence is taken. Students will be severed in half and have their organs blown everywhere, but at the end of the incident no one dies 'because magic'. Our first 'bad guy' has a limb cut off and throat fatally cut and was left for dead in a hidden chamber as far as the reader is concerned, but then will be spoken of in passing as being alive and having had minimal punishment (their research put on hold).

No one would go to this school. I have no suspension of disbelief when reading this. Too many people are trying to kill each other for arbitrary reasons and no one cares.

The main characters are interesting, if not weird, and there are other things going on in the story that would keep me reading, but I can't get past how ridiculous the rest of it is to enjoy it.