Addergoole

Addergoole by Lyn Thorne-Alder

Summary: Shahin, Jamian, and Kailani are all sent to a mysterious underground school in the middle of nowhere. At first everything is going quite normally, but then strange things start to happen. Students are going through some odd little changes and the story goes from being your average school story to something quite different.

Likes: The story starts off a little slow, as most school stories do. It takes a while to build up the characters and establish the setting and whatnot. Shahin is an odd goth, Jamian is hiding a dark secret, and Kailani just seems to be a little lost. It starts off like most magical creature school stories, but after a while you wonder when the magic is going to come in. When it does come in, it's subtle and surreal, which is what the author was intending. The tone of that part is amazingly strange in a good way. We experience the situation as the different point of view does and it's a really interesting read. It's odd when you finally get down to it, which is a good thing. Then after that everything gets even more strange and exciting and you want to keep reading.

As other readers have mentioned, it is a little reminscent of Tales of MU, but definitely sets itself apart. There are three separate storylines that each have different parts. It's refreshing that we get the school through different perspectives instead of just one. The sex isn't overt and overdone, nor does the author shy away to a fade to black scene. This story deals with a lot of the same issues as ToMU, such as gender roles, sexuality, and ownership. However, since this story is in the 3rd person and has three separate storylines, it makes for a different style of reading.

Dislikes: There are a few typos here and there, but other than that the story is pretty interesting. I'm a little miffed that there isn't a RSS feed either. I wouldn't mind reading this story every time there was a new post.

Overall: If you like ToMU, but want something with a lot less explicit sex, this is the story for you. If you like magical creature school stories this is one of the better stories out there.