Zodiac Academy: The Awakening Review and Analysis

Romantasy has been a pretty big hit in the world of books lately and if you’ve been reading my posts for a good while now, you’ll know that I like to talk about the genre quite a lot. Romantasy as a concept is a pretty interesting one seeing as it blends romance and fantasy in a way where the two sources must be effectively equal to each other in terms of weight on the story. So, I recently was scrolling through TikTok (follow me on there while you’re here!) and I saw some BookTokers recommend a romantasy called Zodiac Academy: The Awakening. So, I decided to check Zodiac Academy: The Awakening out and do a review about it for you guys based on how I feel it did in terms of several aspects from the characters to the world building and the overall ability to balance fantasy with romance. 

As an author and writer (check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga), I’ve always found an interest in reading books just as much as I had an interest in writing books. Reading was what helped me hone my writing craft a lot when I was younger and I still love collecting books to this day. I also think that reading as a writer means doing an in-depth analysis on what we’re reading to learn and see how we can grow as writers ourselves. Romantasy is a genre that I teach about a lot and I think that it is truly an interesting one, which is why I’ve got 20 free romantasy writing prompts just for you to grab! Sign up below so you can get them right away. 

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Spoiler-Free Review of Zodiac Academy: The Awakening

The Synopsis

The Awakening is the first book in the ongoing Zodiac Academy series and it follows twin sisters Tory and Darcy as they are thrust into the world of Solaria, a magical realm where fae and vampires and werewolves are common and magic is expected. 

Tory and Darcy discover that they are the long-lost fae princesses of Solaria and that the King and Queen (their real parents) had been killed many years ago. Their whole lives were spent believing they were humans and going between terrible foster parents and homes. Now 18, they are meant to be on their own, scraping by any odd jobs and crime to pay rent. When they are visited by a mysterious stranger who whisks them away, their lives basically get turned completely upside down. 

In Solaria, they now must navigate the world of the Zodiac Academy where different creatures come together and their children learn how to harness their powers. However, their return creates a massive rift in the Academy, as after the royal family died, they were succeeded by four families (the council). Their children, the four heirs, are next in line to rule, and their ascension is basically threatened by the return of the Vega twins. 

The World Building

As a world building fan myself and someone that has talked plenty about world building, this is something that I look at pretty heavily when it comes to any book I read in the fantasy genre. In fact, you can check out my massive 340+ page workbook on world building that teaches you everything you need to know about creating practically an entire universe from the smallest atom up. 

Zodiac Academy’s first book definitely has lots of world building. You’ve got this magical realm called Solaria, different creatures (sirens, fae, vampires, werewolves, etc…) and there is evidence of a magic system. However, with this in mind, there are a few things that I think definitely could’ve been better about the world building. 

Religion

First up, the concept of religion doesn’t seem to be a major part of the Solaria world. We don’t really know what they believe and if there even is a belief system. I assume the concept of Zodiacs is part of their belief system, but it’s not really clear why the zodiac system of the Soliarans is the same as the humans. It’s not entirely clear either as to why they believe in the zodiac concept either. 

On top of this, we don’t really have a reason as to why these magical creatures exist. What is their source? Did something create them? Do they believe in gods? A singular god? We know that there are pegasi and werewolves and all this, but why? 

I’ve read a lot of fantasy books that don’t really have a super in-depth religion, but even then, there is still evidence of worship and belief in some capacity. For example, The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie has evidence of belief in it and the different cultures have different views on religion. We know that the Anglish people don’t really have much by the way of faith, and the Northmen believe in the idea of man returning to the mud when they die, and the Gurkish have a God and a prophet. 

This is something in the world building that I personally think could’ve been a bit better, but it’s not the most important aspect of world building for some stories. 

Magic

There is a heavy presence of magic in Zodiac Academy: The Awakening. The magic system is mostly elemental, meaning that it’s based on earth, water, fire, air. This is pretty normal and I don’t have a problem with utilizing elements in magic. In fact, my series, The Fallen Age Saga, has a magic system that works with the elements (granted it also has things like nuclear, blood, death, etc…). 

In Zodiac Academy, Solaria’s magic systems are a bit differing across creatures. Each creature has a magic reserve within them and each person can specialize in a number of elements. Each creature has the affinity for magic based on a points system, with 10 being the strongest. There are also creatures like Vampires and Sirens that take energy from others to fuel themselves. For instance, vampires can suck blood and draw energy from that. Sirens feed off of emotional energy. 

There is also the presence of something called coercion magic, which seems to be a system that can force people to do whatever you command them to do. You have the ability to put up a shield against this coercion, but some coercion is stronger than others. This is personally for me, one of the weaker points of the magic system, as it’s not entirely clear why this coercion exists if the people of Solaria just interact with each other. It doesn’t seem like they frequently dip into the human world, so why would they need this and why can everyone use it? 

Beyond this, there is also magic where a character can heal others by giving magical energy, magic where they can clean others, etc… Think of something like a character waving their hand and making something disappear or things like that. 

I think that there is 100% a lot of magic in this book and that’s solid. Where I had a few issues though is that it’s not entirely clear where these magic powers came from, why some have access to things others don’t, and what the true limitations are for magic. It seems like they can be drained and become physically weak, but I would’ve liked to see more about why for instance vampires need to replenish their energy by drinking blood but other fae don’t. 

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The Creatures

In the series, there are a lot of different magical creatures. You’ve got fae, vampires, shifters, nymphs, etc… I didn’t really see anything lacking in this area, we just know that there are lots of creatures and depending on what some can shift into, that affects their strength. So, yes, you’ve got people that are dragon-shifters and people that are werewolves, etc… 

The Characters

I had to make this an entire section on its own, because I have… a lot of things to say here. The two main characters are fine, and I actually found them compelling to read from the perspectives of. They’re twin sisters, so I sometimes was a bit confused for a moment as to whose POV I was reading from, but I eventually found tells that made each one stand out and so it wasn’t all that confusing at the end of the day. 

However, I think that since this is a romance, I understand that romance is a big part of the plot, but something about the way the two MCs reacted constantly to any man they saw was a bit off-putting. Even while they were being bullied or humiliated or attacked or harassed, they just kept focusing on how attractive the men were. I kid you not, there are moments where I was in shock at just how awful some of the people were to the Vega twins and they were just thinking about how hot the person was. And this was CONSTANT. It wasn’t once or twice to where I would’ve been fine with it. It was consistently constant. 

The four heirs are meant to be love interests I guess? I believe this is a bully romance, so they’re meant to be really rude and they’re bullies. But honestly, I have no idea how I’m supposed to root for this romance to work out in any capacity. I genuinely did not like the heirs at all. They were weird, inappropriate, rude, and just very comically evil at times to the main characters. It was just endless pages of these two girls getting harassed by four grown men the entire time and I was like, yeah, I’m not a fan of these four to be fair. The only guy I guess I can excuse is Professor Orion, since he wasn’t terrible, but the rest were very hard to like. 

I honestly felt so bad for them 99% of the time because it was really hard to read some things that they went through. It was just a lot and constant. I truly don’t like the love interests and I have no idea how they’ll be redeemed throughout the series. It’s gonna be tough to convince me, honestly. 

The Main Issue…

I think the main thing that bugged me about Zodiac Academy is that the main characters are thrust into this world and everyone expects them to know everything. It’s weird to me that these two royals return after all these years and are placed in a school with no extra attention, no extra help, no extra anything. I can’t really wrap my head around why this would be allowed. I’d think personally that if two princesses returned, they’d be taken to the government and the royal capitol or something around that and trained to become royals there, no? I understand the council’s heirs are at Zodiac Academy, but that’s not the same as a king’s family. I also find it strange that everyone dogs on the two main characters constantly. Why doesn’t anyone step in? These two are ROYALS!

I also think it’s a bit tough to believe that they arrive at this school and are not greeted or at least spoken to by the council? Why not just make the system a constitutional monarchy where the two are figureheads at best and the council is the true government and move on? Why have the four heirs constantly figuring out new ways to torment them when the solution is much simpler than this?

Overall Thoughts

Personally, I found Zodiac Academy to be an interesting read but I’m not 100% sure how I feel about it. I read it relatively quickly and I enjoyed it for the entertainment factor, but to me, it wasn’t the best read of the year or anything like that. I guess I liken reading this to watching one of those YA novel adaptation shows like Shadow Hunters or something like that. It’s not really amazing, but you don’t mind it because it’s entertaining enough. To me, that’s what this was, just a fun read but nothing too serious. Definitely, don’t go into this expecting a masterpiece. It’s like a satirical romantasy and it had its funny moments that gave me a good laugh here and there. I saw someone on Reddit call it the sharknado of romantasy, and uh, yeah, honestly, that’s probably how I’d describe it too…

I usually rate books out of 5 and for me, I would say this is around a 3 out of 5. I wouldn’t say that it was the best written book of all time, but I usually don’t give books low ratings because if I at least enjoyed it, then I wouldn’t give it below a 3. So, if you want to read something fun and turn your brain off a bit, then definitely pick up Zodiac Academy. If you want sophisticated world building, political court intrigue, and heavy vibes, this isn’t the one for you. 

You can pick up a copy of Zodiac Academy over on Amazon!

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