Very mixed feelings about this one.

The book bills itself as "Six Candidates: Five will be initiated. One will be eliminated." and a major plot point in this book is that these magicians discover eliminated means 🔪eliminated. Coming off of reading other "dark academia" books like the Scholomance series (aka 75% of your graduating class will die, possibly some even at breakfast, but it's better than the alternatives), it felt like this was very drawn out for the reader who knew this one murder was coming the whole time. There's some interesting worldbuilding being gestured at in the background, but most of it unfortunately stays out of focus while the camera is on the relationships of these six.

Ultimately, this is a book about six characters befriending and betraying each other in a quest to gain access to secret magical knowledge. However, when the focus is on the relationships, the motivation for WHY these characters are even here is very scant. One wants knowledge (and this is the only one that makes sense.) Two are there because they're obnoxiously competitive and the other one went. The other three honestly just seem like they're bored with life, which didn't end up feeling very compelling for me.