The only problem is he missed the inception date when he was 8 years old and lost his chance at becoming a Rithmatist. Now the actual story: sixteen-year-old Joel is INFATUATED and OBSESSED with Rithmatics. Every Rithmatist student is shipped away to Nebrask during their final year of schooling to train there before getting sent to the front lines. No one knows who first drew them or where they keep coming from, but the Rithmatists are all trained to fight and contain the wild chalklings. In the isle of Nebrask, there's a huge ongoing war between humans and wild chalkings. No one can physically walk through or over a Line of Forbiddence. Wild chalklings will eat human flesh and rip them apart. You can attack using the squiggly Lines of Vigor or creatures called chalklings (chalklings can be anything from unicorns to knights or dragons).īut these things take actual form and can affect the real world as well.

Any imperfections (for example, a Line of Forbiddence isn't perfectly straight) are weak points and are subject to attack and breach. The more perfect your drawing is, the more stable and powerful it is. So you draw a Circle of Warding around yourself. I absolutely won't be able to do this justice since it's so intricate, but I'll try to explain the basics. Rithmatists are able to draw glyphs using chalk, and those glyphs come to life. There are a chosen few people who become Rithmatists. To explain the story, we need to start with the magic system.

This book is Harry Potter meets Fullmetal Alchemist. (First off, look at that gorgeous cover!)

The rithmatist book