Publication Date: July 22nd, 2025
Hardcover. 576 pages.
Clara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job gone awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards-a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy.
Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy's enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape-for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time.
In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be.
Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world-and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?"
I apologize that this review is so overdue! I finished this book about a week and a half ago and started writing the review, but then got way too busy and it took forever to get it done, but it’s finally finished, so here we go!
Arcana Academy is exactly what it’s billed as: a dark(ish) academia fantasy romance. This could be great--or not so great--depending on your reading tastes and what you're looking for. We follow Clara Graysword as she’s given a choice: continue to rot in prison for illegally inking magical tarot cards, or fake an engagement to Prince Kaelis, the headmaster at Arcana Academy, in order to become a student at the school and help him with an unimaginable task. As you might expect, Clara takes the latter option, and thus begins our story of her joining Arcana Academy and everything that follows. While there, she’s also trying to uncover what happened to her sister (who was also a student at the academy), while also maintaining a revenge plot for her mother’s murder.
Clara is the perfect protagonist for this story and was genuinely entertaining to follow. She’s clever, headstrong--but fortunately she doesn’t consistently make terrible decisions, which was a nice change--and is always thinking ahead. I really enjoyed seeing how she navigated the many complex aspects of her new situation, including navigating relationships with fellow students, figuring out her new classes, and of course balancing her new "relationship" with the surly prince. She’s incredibly talented at inking cards, but we still see her struggle with certain topics and learning new techniques, which I found to be a great balance of a protagonist who is capable and clever, but not perfect at everything.
This also brings me to some quick remarks on Kaelis. He's not a bad character in the slightest, but he's a bit... boring. If you've read any similar fantasy featuring the grumpy, "evil" dark guy who is just so bad and hates our protagonist, then you've read them all, including this one. This was another case of someone who is constantly described as being so bad and mean and dangerous, but I am not really ever given a reason to believe that. And, of course, as Kaelis and Clara get to know each other and work together more, we see a breaking down of barriers that feels like everything I've seen before. And as negative as this all sounds, I'm not saying it's bad, as it's done fairly well--if a bit hasty and sudden--and I think many readers will enjoy it. It's just not going to blow your mind or bring anything particularly new to this trope.
The magic system is really intriguing, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the tarot card-based magical processes. Some aspects felt a little strange to me and I’d really love to be able to see it in action to better visualize how it works, but overall I found it to be really creative and compelling. The magic ranges from simpler spells to more complex methods and uses, and I liked learning about the different nuances that affect it, such as which inks are used to draw the cards, how they are wielded, and so on.
The pacing in Arcana Academy is a little hit or miss, as it sometimes felt a bit rushed and other times a little drawn out, but overall I was able to follow the story fairly well and enjoyed my time reading it. I do think some things in this book could've used a bit more time for exploration, but it was generally easy to follow. I did find the way that Kaelis and Clara's relationship developed to be both developed at a reasonable and slower pace, as well eventually a bit sudden (as I mentioned earlier) and I think could have been smoothed out a bit at the end. I found Kova’s writing generally smooth and well-crafted, though there were a few moments that felt slightly choppy or like they could have been tightened up or even edited out. There were also a few words thrown in that just didn't fit the story and felt like the author opened a thesaurus to find something different to say (for reference, I think it's great to use a thesaurus, but not if the words chosen don't seem to fit the tone of the rest of the book).
Arcana Academy is a perfectly solid story. It’s well-executed, tells an engaging narrative, and has some strong plot beats and compelling conflicts. The issue is that it lacks anything that truly feels new. The problem is that it's missing anything that brings something new to the table. It's definitely not a requirement that books always be innovating and turning tropes upside and so forth, and I certainly love plenty of books that don't do that, but for this book to be worth the hype I've started seeing for it, I feel like it really needs a bit more. I think people w ho love these tropes and this genre will absolutely adore this book and that makes me so happy for them, but for people who are wanting something to add a bit more depth to the tropes used and/or something new in the motivations and plot, then I'm afraid they may be disappointed.
Overall, Arcana Academy is a strong story that will leave many readers full satisfied, while others, like myself, maybe come away from it wishing for just a little bit more. I will definitely consider reading the sequel to see where Kova decides to take many of the different storylines in this one, and it may just end up being even better than this first book.
