I think people are picking this up and expecting something it isn't. The magical school is more like Harriet Vane's Oxford than Hogwarts, and in any case is incidental to the political intrigue that takes up most of the book. I found it a very fine balance between coming of age, comedy of manners, Ruritanian palace intrigue, and magicks. And the writing's very good. More for adults than Stevermer's later books. There's a lot of literary allusion and conversations that imply rather than explain, so you have to piece things together. Lacks the tedious overexplanation of which most fantasy is now guilty, which apparently some people love!