In Italy is sold this new book series, Melowy, around a group of female unicorns with fairy wings, called in-universe "Pegasus" (even in the Italian version). At first glance could be passed as a clone of FiM becouse of the art style, but truth is an high-school story, like Funtasia, mixed with some Winx-style stuff.
Answering the most important question first: is worth? Looking the first book, yes. The book follows the average formula of adventures in a magical school and girls with special powers, a mix between Winx and Harry Potter redone with Unicorns, under the guise of FiM-fan art-like artbook; however, don't be fooled, of FiM has nothing.
The story follows the adventures of five friends at the school of Destiny, where, on the planet of Aura, only some particular pegasuses with special marks on their wings can attend. The females are called Melowy, and are fairy-like, while the males are Megas. Here, they learn how use their powers and understand what is their "destiny", learning what is the meaning of friendship, but there is also a menace that is planning to destroy the school, if it will find a particular artfact hidden in the school...
So yes, the plot doesn't sound nothing of exciting, but there are other points that I really like of this book series for now. First, it's strong fantasy oriented, maybe even more than Filly. There are four kingdoms in Aura, from where the characters come, everyone which is ruled by a particular enviroment. In the books are explored, for now, the Kingdom of the Night, where is an everlasting night and time is marked by the rise and fall of the moon only; there is also an excursion in the Kindom of the Winter, but the book will be out only in a few days at the moment I writing this. Males and Females are differtiated: initally is hard undestand why they called them "Pegasuses", even if the have fairy wings and are, effectively, unipegasuses. Later are shows that males have more common "pegasuses" wings, and the Megas have a their school too, called Chance, althrough seems that actually there isn't a development of this point in the books (differently from TV Shows, I could expect a book series could take suspended points later). The plots are very simple, but usually try to avoid to be naive or plain silly. The first book introduces the girls and how they meet, they need to pass a test in order to be admitted to study in the school. They enter in a garden which is capable to rearrange magically itself to challange the contestants, and they find a way to pass an obstacle doing something togheter. A lot of common objections are resolved in the plot: they can't use magic, they are prevented to fly, and the garden forces them to going foward.
While in many points Melowy remains rooted to many themes and tropes of the genre without falling too far, and with also some nasty, unpleasant antagonists too, like Filly it tries to find an own way to rewrite them, adding some good ideas.
Some bad points: the art is excessively close to FiM, or better, to some FiM fan art style. One could easily thought that is a copycat of Friendship is Magic, while Melowy is far both in genre and style from it. Is a pity: the story is worth something better than being tought like just a copy.
The writing lacks of near any kind of descriptions: places and characters are just hinted, but few or nothing is said about their aspect or details. For many things (sometime even basic one, like the color of the coat!) you must rely on the illustrations, that is bad when even in an illustrated book, pictures should help the text but not replace it. I had some difficults to remember what's make different the main characters between them, without no written references for imagine them, and pictures are, for me, easy to forgot.
Putting aside these problems, I found this series very enjoyable, and a very nice addition to the "unicorn" genre. The first collection introduces a lot of the world, that doesn't seems cover in details except for some bits: I hope they print more of this, and they push foward the setting and characters.
I have no rumors that the books, for now, have a foreign edition for now. I'm keeping an eye on Atlantyca social streams for that, but I think we need to wait until next year.
A side note: I think the book is clearly written by an Italian, despite the author is called Danielle Star and the short biography tells she is British. I think is hard that a British would call the characters with the correct Italian versions of greek godness, when even in Italy is accepted to use the English ones for have a "exotical" flavour to a Fantasy story, and that other characters have instead fancy Italian names few knowed from the foreign: I don't know how many of you heard the name "Teodora" for example. Maybe the writer knows well Italy (nothing that I could do too with some research about unusual British or American names for example), but sounds too elaborated for a children books that, in some points, doesn't seem put much effort to care of some aspect, like the lack of descriptions.
Melowy isn't a Italian word that we neither can pronunce correctly: our alphabet lacks both of W and Y. We usually spell the "W" as we say "V", and the "Y" like our "I"; therefore, we read it "MELOVI". We also don't make distinctions from plural or singular in this case, becouse being a "foreign" word, doesn't follow the standar grammatical rules, and "Melowy" stands for both forms (I think a correct English version should be "Melowies"). I think that Megas shows the same problem, is meant to be both plural and singular, but I guess a English speaker could though that the "S" is a plural form only, and the singular form would be "Mega".
In Italy there are too much fantasy writers who loves imitate English-like names for a fantasy series, falling in the most common errors about how some letters are really read in English. Even the italian Melowy spot spell the name wrong than how is written.
