With a vast amount of novels in the Young Adult fantasy, it’s becoming harder and harder to find uniquely compelling books in this genre full of generic plots and characters. “All of Us Villains,” written by Amanda Foody and Christine Herman, is promising enough –– the novel sets itself in a modern fantasy world in which seven teenagers fight to the death for powerful magic in an organized tournament. However, for all of its potential to be the next great fantasy, “All of Us Villains” falls just a bit short in execution. I was very intrigued by the premise, but in the end, this novel became just another tolerable Young Adult fantasy.

The novel attempts to be a dark, ambitious tale that blurs the line between right and wrong, opening with a cast of self-interested characters willing to do anything for glory –– but these characters’ developments quickly abandon blurry morality as the focus of the story. I’m all for character development –– but not such swift changes in just the second chapter describing the character. Alistair, for example, made his mark as an unashamedly villainous main character, but by his next chapter, every amoral and unapologetic characteristic the authors have built up is squashed into a misunderstood boy stereotype. However, I do applaud the authors for how they use four points of view to craft four three-dimensional characters with altogether different circumstances, motivations and development. Some characters come from families with glorious reputations, while others are scorned; some characters are motivated by renown, others by survival. While these characters may not have stayed true to their villainous origins, the multiple points of view really illustrate the complexity of human nature, especially when placed in such an unethical situation as fighting other people to the death. Still, the multiple points of view may be a pitfall of the novel. With four points of view, each character’s development had to be rushed in order to complete four stories in four hundred pages. The sudden character changes in part can be attributed to this. The lack of focus on one character made it harder to get through the novel as well –– it was hard to stay interested in all four points of view and even harder to connect to all four characters.

The world-building as well is disappointingly vague. Seeing as the tournament is set isolated from the rest of the town, the choice not to delve too deep into the technicalities of the world is understandable. However, I was not impressed by the lack of detail on the magic system. Magic really takes center stage in this novel –– it distinguishes the novel from other death tournaments like the Hunger Games. Even the most basic details –– the difference between “high magick” and “common magick,” for instance –– are ignored, and the references to the characters using magic are vague and unexplained.