Obviously, I'm not the main audience for this chapter book, but this was not nearly as enjoyable as the other My Little Pony books I've read. My advice is to stick with the comic collections (although the other chapter book I've read, "Discord and the Ponyville Players," wasn't so bad).
My complaints about this book are as follows:
1. The premise is absurd and full of scientific mumbo jumbo: "There is a mechanism to the magic that I am trying to unlock and reveal so that, if we need to, we can adjust the control settings and create an enhanced pony-up experience." This means that Sunset Shimmer -- a top student of magic and spell-making in Equestria -- is busy doing ridiculous things like measuring the size and shape of cracked eggs, creating an app to find invisible colors, etc.
2. The writing was sloppy, for example "kittens and PUPPIES MEOWING softly" (!!!). The ending also made Twilight Sparkle's reply sound ominous.
3. The characters didn't act like themselves. For example, Sunset Shimmer came off like a drama queen, and it only took a little performance monitoring to turn Rainbow Dash into a clutz.
4. It had no illustrations (whereas "Discord and the Pony Players" at least had simple illustrations).