More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg – New Twist on Fantasy Magic

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I borrowed the first book in Charlie Holmberg’s Paper Magician YA fantasy series, The Paper Magician, from the library and found it surprisingly good.  About the only concession to YA is the book is short and a very fast read that could have been more developed.

After main character Ceomy used her scholarship to magic school to cram two years into one and graduate top of her class.  She expected to choose the element she would bond with – paper, metal, plastic, glass, rubber – but instead was assigned to paper, the least favored, unpopular substance.  Once she bonds with paper she can never reach her dream be a Smelter, bonded to metal.

The magic system is intriguing and I hope author Holmberg explores it more in future novels.  Basically paper magicians can do anything that paper can do.  For example, if one folds a basic fan then one can use that fan to create a massive windstorm. Or one can read anything written on paper and produce illusions that illustrate the story.

I got all sorts of ideas from this second notion, especially once Ceomy found that not everything she produced was an illusion; at least one was real and lasting.  Could one print a story about housework, read it and get the dishes done by magic?   Or build a house by reading about it?  Or win a war by writing about collapsing the enemy’s walls?

Ceomy herself was a far better character than I expected.  She makes the most of her opportunities, even when thrust into the least glamorous magic world.  She is resourceful, determined, smart, loyal.  When a dark magician attacks her mentor Thane, Ceomy risks everything to save him.  She learns as much paper magic as she can and, more important, learns how to think of new paper spells, new uses for paper.

The Paper Magician is set in a London around the early 1900s, with automobiles and carriages, trains but no planes.  Holmberg doesn’t elaborate the setting more than needed, creating a small problem that those unfamiliar with London may not be familiar with the locations she uses.

Ceomy’s magic school oversees her apprentice years; while she is assigned to a single magician she is still bound by the rules and Thane grades her on performance.  I found this part interesting and the school structure adds some ease to the plot; it gives Thane legitimate reasons to test Ceomy and stretch her skills.

Overall The Paper Magician is a most enjoyable book.  I would prefer a more complex novel that develops the magic system more intensely and a plot that has more layers.  The characters are well done and the dialogue and interactions feel real.

4 Stars

Marked – Book 9 in Alex Verus Series by Benedict Jacka – Magic in London

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Adventure writers can go two ways with their series:  They can either entangle their hero in a series of adventures, loosely linked but not necessarily sequential, or the hero can adventure while striving towards a goal.  Wizard series tend towards the second, where the hero perhaps gets himself in a mess in an early story, then works to resolve the knotty problem in books 2-N.  Think of Harry Dresden or Simon & Montague or Harry Potter or the Iron Druid.  Or Alex Verus in Benedict Jacka’s excellent series.

Marked, book 9 in Jacka’s series, starts with Alex seated (rather precariously) on the junior council of Light Mages in Britain.  In the first two books Alex is refreshingly honest, with simple goals:  Stay alive and keep his friends healthy and alive.  Sadly for him, Alex apprenticed to a Dark Mage before leaving in revulsion.  Also he is a very skilled diviner and lots of people want to use him.  Other people want to use him to get to the Dark Mage leadership – a place Alex vehemently rejects and fled for his life to avoid a few books ago in Burned.  Now he is trapped as the aide to the one Dark Mage with a seat on the Council.  His boss is in mage jail so Alex temporarily holds the seat.

Marked picks up with the same grim feeling we saw first in Burned, then Bound.  Alex has too many enemies and is too well known to simply slide off into obscurity.  He lost that choice a few books back when he tried to throw his lot in with the Light Mages.  Now Alex believes his only hope is to get so powerful that no one wants to go after him and he can choose what he does.  This opens the story up for many plot threads but we lost the charming young mage we met in the first few books.

Jacka brings a few new twists to the story.  Earlier Alex implied that young mages didn’t have a lot of choice.  They could apprentice with a Light or a Dark, they could attend the Light apprentice program, or they could remain adepts who are at everyone’s mercy.  This time Alex muses that the declared Light and Dark mages are a fraction of the total; he says the majority are neutral, independents.  It isn’t clear how one becomes (or stays) independent, and we’re left to wonder whether Alex could have lost the target on his back if he had not made waves, had been independent.  Apparently it is too late for that and Alex will move forward.

Characters

As you can see from the discussion about Alex’s choices, Jacka makes his characters into real people that we care about.  We identify with and root for Alex as he threads between morality and survival.  I’m not sure I’d have made the same choice he did, but I care that he did make it and want him to succeed.  (Of course, if your primary goal is survival then eventually you will lose.)

Alex is a thinker who is growing into a deadly doer; in fact he isn’t always thinking as well as he should.  He goes to ask the dragon under Arachne’s home some questions but doesn’t seem to absorb what he learns.  (Typical of dragon foretelling, the answers are cryptic to useless.)

Alex has matured considerably in the nine books.  He’s gained and lost friends, gained power, gained cynicism and gained too many enemies.  He always has good reason for what he does but it doesn’t always work and other people end up holding the bag – and holding a grudge against Alex.

Marked spends as much time on Anne as on Alex.  Anne is both the hero and the villain; Alex relies on her, saves her; she saves him.  Anne is enigmatic and it will be interesting to see how her character develops.

Anne wants to be a mage and live a normal life, to have a family, friends.  She got abducted and trained to kill as a teen and from that experience developed all sorts of deadly skills.  She shoved the immoral parts of her personality into a fortress, walled it off and threw away the key because she didn’t want to kill.  Alex encounters this non-Anne a few times and so far Anne is unwilling to integrate her two sides.  That may be book 10.

Back Story

The Light Mage council and its adherents are a typical bunch of academics/middle managers/PTA bosses.  They like to play games about dominance and face and will bicker and debate endlessly before taking action.  And when they do take action they aren’t too concerned about things like other people or truth or morality.  Yet Jacka made this believable – in fact it’s more believable than the benevolent, altruistic Council that some books about wizards and magic have.  People are people whether mages or not, and that’s how people act.

These mage leaders, both light and dark, seem motivated by power and greed for more power.  The revelation that the council is actually a minority of mages makes this more believable.  Most people do not dedicate their lives to power.  In Marked we see that is true for most mages too.

Even so, the endless threats that Alex faces seem a bit over the top.  He doesn’t seem to know how to gain a power base of people, aside from his friends, and is the obvious scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.  I hope he learns to expand his definition of “power” to include influence based on wisdom, credibility, helpfulness and not just raw magical power.

Overall

Jacka writes well and Marked has good dialogue, interesting, likable characters.  Marked has more action and a little less reflection than prior novels in the series, that combined with Alex’s declared intention to amass as much power as possible to ensure he and his friends survive makes the story a little less appealing than the prior novels.  I like Alex but I liked him a little more when he was the earnest want-to-do-good guy.  He still wants to do good and he still does good but he’s harder edged now, not as pleasant a chap.

My rating here would be 4+ or just under 5.  Marked is solid, excellent story and characters, but I don’t feel like it is quite a 5 star novel.

My thanks to the publishers who provided an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A Darker Shade of Magic – V. E. Schwab – A Gathering of Shadows, Disappointing Fantasy

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A Darker Shade of Magic

A Darker Shade of Magic is the first of three novels in a universe where there are four Londons – Grey London which is ours, Red London full of magic and life, White London where magic is dying and Black London where magic destroyed everything.  Black London is closed off and barred to keep the other worlds safe.  Such a fascinating premise, full of opportunity for good story telling!

Author V. E. Schwab tells the story through Red London’s prince Rhy and his foster brother Kell, and their dynamics with the kings in Red, White and Grey London.  Kell is actually an Antari, a powerful magician able to use blood magic to pass from one London to another and chafes at being confined to London, to the forced fosterage with the the king and queen.  Kell and Rhy are close as brothers, as best friends, and this love combines with a sense of duty to keep Kell in line.

Kell (and the other Antari, Holland from White London, possibly an enemy) are forbidden to bring people or items across from one London to another, and are forbidden to do more than pass letters from one monarch to another.  Kell rebels and secretly takes small collectibles across for himself and sometimes others.  Unfortunately the last item he takes, supposedly a letter, is actually a powerful artifact from Black London, sent to corrupt and destroy Red London.

Had Schwab stayed within this boundary she would have had a powerful, compelling story.  What will Kell and Rhy do?  How will Holland revitalize his world of White London?  Can that world even be saved?  How do they push the Black London artifact back where it belongs?

Kell, Rhy and Holland aren’t complete, 3-dimensional characters, but they are close, with a reasonable shot to develop into real people that we readers care about.  Unfortunately Schwab introduces Lila Bard from Grey London, orphaned thief and wanna-be adventurer and the story and characters go downhill from here.  I don’t like Lila.  She’s the character that we are supposed to identify with and root for but she’s shallow, foolish, selfish, uncaring.  She is tolerable in the first book, probably because she remains a stock character and plays a secondary role.

A Gathering of Shadows

I liked the story well enough to read most of the second novel in the series, A Gathering of Shadows, but finally gave up with about 50 pages to go in this second novel, skipped to the ending, then read only the ending of the third novel, A Conjuring of Light.  Lila is the main character in A Gathering of Shadows and I couldn’t stand her, and the other characters do not carry the story.

The writing is OK, nothing great, with semi-decent dialogue and slow pacing.  Schwab spends most of A Gathering of Shadows with Lila on a privateer ship before she, her ship’s captain and Kell, all compete in magic games with the other three empires in the Red London world.  The real story is with Holland and his struggle in White London, which gets comparatively few pages.

There are plot holes of course.  Normally if the story is good or the characters are real people we readers whiz right by the holes, notice but suspend disbelief.  This series isn’t that good and the plot holes stand out.  The most obvious is the difference between Grey and White London.

Grey London never had much magic and now has virtually none, yet manages to thrive (more or less).  White London used to have magic which is fading and dwindling and the entire world is dying.  Why the difference?  Holland manages to bring some magic back to White London which regains some color and life, but the end of A Conjuring of Light suggests this too will fade, with only a whisper of hope for life.

The series has overall high ratings on Amazon although several negative reviewers shared my dislike for Lila and the overall wooden writing.

Overall I would rate Book 1, A Darker Shade of Magic, as 3+ stars.
Book 2, A Gathering of Shadows, is 2 Stars and I didn’t read enough of Book 3 to rate it.

 

Wizard Undercover – Rogue Agent Book 4 Fantasy by K. E. Mills

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Wizard Undercover is the latest novel in K. E. Mills’ excellent fantasy series, Rogue Agent, about wizard Gerald Dunwoody, and his friends Reg the bird, Monk Markam, Emerabiblia (Bibie) Markam and Melissande.  In the first three novels, The Accidental Sorcerer, Witches Incorporated and Wizard Squared, Gerald changes from semi-talented to very powerful and very unpredictable, a rogue wizard, conscripted into his country’s service.

Gerald’s boss, Sir Alec in this world’s version of the CIA/NSA/etc., sees potential in having a very powerful wizard chock full of unorthodox spells, and prevents Gerald from removing the dark magic he consumed in the prior novels.  This leaves Gerald on his own, terrified of the grimoire spells, desperate to control himself, to not follow his alter ego in a parallel universe who reveled in evil and killed anyone who got in his way.

Wizard Undercover picks up right after book three ends, with Gerald heartsick at what happened and frightened of hia magic.  He grieves for Reg – his Reg – wants to get to know the new Reg, wants to love Bibbie but fears he will hurt her.

The main conflict in the novel is Gerald’s internal struggle.  Can he control his magic, can he use it without contaminating himself?  Can he and Bibbie find each other?   The external conflicts set the backdrop and secondary action:  Can Gerald prevent an international disaster and can Princess Melisande and Bibbie jump into the heretofore all male world of international espionage.  Author Mills deftly braids all three plots into a solid novel.

Wizard Undercover is not as compelling a read as the earlier three books in the series.  Good as the story is, interesting as the characters are, I find my attention drifting, reading 50-100 pages at a time.  The espionage backdrop is the weakest part of the story and Wizard Undercover needs a strong plot to hold all the emotional tensions.  In the prior novels Gerald and friends fought for their lives; the threat in Wizard Undercover is more diffuse, impersonal for most of the story.  I think the interpersonal tensions work best with a stronger plot and existential threat.

Author K. E. Mills has written a good book, one I recommend.  Like the other novels in the Rogue Agents series Wizard Undercover has a true ending, no cliff hangers.  Read the books in sequence because the characters continue and the plots reference previous events.  I look forward to a fifth book with Gerald, Reg and the rest.

4+ Stars

Review: The Memory Magus: The Haze by Dean F. Wilson

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This short story came to me through InstaFreebie and the cover and title intrigued me so I read it.  Unfortunately the title is the best part as the story has no plot, no point, no character development, no setting.

An old enemy arrives one evening and demands that Magus Ladesan uses his memory altering talent to ensures this enemy wins an election.  The method is brutally simple:  first extort and torture voters then erase memories and record their vote.

That’s the story.  Bad guy wins.

1 Star

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The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran

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The Scarab’s Curse (The Savage and Sorcerer, Book 1) by Craig Halloran is not deep.  It is light entertainment.  The first scene has the sorcerer Finster sitting in his office, the balcony over a small town bar, giving love (lust) tokens to a client – along with the bad news that the man’s wife has been unfaithful.  This scene is richly detailed, the setting is carefully drawn so we feel the fire’s warmth and see the steep stairs to the balcony.  Soldiers rudely interrupt, arrest Finster and drag him off to the Wizard Haven.

This first scene got me hooked.  I appreciate an author’s skill who is able to create a mood and setting without lots of boring telling, who keeps the narrative alive and moving while filling us in on the back story.  It is not easy to do.  Halloran did a good job on about the first third of the novel, carefully illuminating setting, mood and character.

The last two thirds or so feel rushed, all plot, minimal background or setting or mood and little character development.  Halloran’s writing style is good and he still tells a good story; he kept me reading.  Halloran says in the afterward that he wrote the story in 8 days, two of which were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so he drafted and finished a reasonably entertaining read in 6 days.  Impressive.

It would have been more impressive had he taking his time and made the last part as good and as enticing as the first third; he would have had a very good novel.  Instead it’s a decent story, but not as good as it could have been.

There is a sequel, The Scarab’s Power, but it’s $2.99 on Amazon, a little pricey if it’s the same overall decent-but-not-great quality as this first novel.   I may look for other books by this author since he is able to tell a good story.

3 Stars

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Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell – Store Kindness to Defeat Evil

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Lost Child of Lychford is sequel to Witches of Lychford (reviewed here), a short, suspenseful novel of three ladies working to thwart demonic plans to break the barriers that protect our world.  The three ladies managed to defeat the demon but there are many worlds and many entities who threaten ours.  We meet two more in Lost Child of Lychford.

The lost child in the title is a toddler who originally appears as a ghost to Lizzie, who is the Lychford vicar cum apprentice border protector.  Lizzie must find within herself the strength to save the child and her town and her friends from the latest evil entities.

In some ways Lost Child is less powerful than Witches because we don’t really see how the new evil entities (again masquerading as people) manage to exert so much control over the three women.  It just happens, and all the while the three are dimly aware something is wrong but cannot save themselves.  Autumn, who was the weakest character in Witches, is stronger here but she still felt more like a character than a person.

Since we’re reading a fantasy suspense novel and not a crime whodunit, Cornell can get away with sparse explanations, providing just enough of a frame that we can suspend disbelief and go along with the story.  Still I would have preferred a little more meat on Lizzie’s story since she was being led to perform horrors in her church upon a child.  It was just a bit unsatisfying.

The ending was interesting because Lizzie manages to save herself with help from the ghost whom she had befriended.  Because she had been kind to the ghost child earlier, the ghost was able to give her back the strength to push off the control.  Judith later explains that Lizzie used the little boy ghost as a battery, storing kindness and goodness, then withdrawing when needed.  I love that metaphor.

Lost Child of Lychford is even shorter than Witches of Lychford, about 133 pages.  That’s the size of a long novella and I do wish Cornell would tie these stories together into one satisfying novel.  Reading these short books is a little like eating appetizers for dinner.

Overall the novel is well written with strong mood contrasts and good dialogue.   Characterization is moderately good with Lizzie confronting her own faith (or lack of it) with stress of her first Christmas as the vicar, while Autumn looks for romance and Judith deals with her own ghost.

4 Stars

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Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell – Moody, Magic and Money

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I bought Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell by mistake (hit “Buy” vs “See”) and what a happy mistake it turned out to be!  The characters live in Lychford, an English town fallen on harder times.  A big chain store wants permission to build a store on the edge of town, promising jobs and an economic boost that have bedazzled most town folk.

The problem is that Lychford sets on a locus, defining boundaries between multiple worlds.  Destroy the town boundary and you destroy the world boundaries.  That sets the story.

Characters

Cornell sketches in the characters enough to capture our interest but the book is short and we don’t really know any of them.  None of them are witches in the traditional sense, more guardians of the borders.

Lizzie is a modern vicar, meaning she believes more or less and wants to overlook sin.  She is new to her parish and learning to tread among the factions in town and church and looking for a friend.   We see the tension between her belief (a bit tenuous but real) and her moral sense and her training to not “judge” anyone.

Autumn spent a year in Fairy and can’t quite believe it.  She has been in and out of mental hospitals and is a thorough skeptic.  The book doesn’t show why Autumn owns a magic shop since she doesn’t believe in magic (or God or anything).

Judith is an interesting old lady, antisocial and rude, the sort of person kids make fun of.  She is the only one who has any clue about Lychford’s special nature or any training in magic.  She takes the other two ladies on as allies only because she is desperate.  Judith is the most complete character.  Our knees ache along with hers as she walks home and climbs the steps to her apartment on misty nights.

We know a little more about each lady at the end of the story.  Cornell does a good job on dialogue and interplay among them; Lizzie and Judith feel like real people while Autumn isn’t fleshed out.

Mood and Setting

Witches of Lychford could be a bit creepy or full of fake magic-y stuff.  It’s not.  The mood is somber.  We know the situation is dire and we know Judith has spent the last 70 years alienating everyone so she has no allies and no one will listen and take her warnings seriously.  Cornell shows us the town’s spooky side only once, when the three walk through the surrounding forest and Judith points out the boundary lines.

The political wrangling and outright bribery feel all too real.  We can feel exactly how uncomfortable the seats are in the town hall and feel the tension as friends and family fall into opposing camps.  That part is good.  The scenes in Autumn’s shop do not feel quite right.  Autumn is much the weakest character and her shop the weakest setting.

Overall

Witches of Lychford is short, only 144 pages in print form.  Cornell tells his story and ends when the incident ends.  He leaves tantalizing clues that Judith, Lizzie and Autumn are not done with each other or with their duties to maintain the borders of Lychford.

Per Amazon Witches of Lychford is the first book in a 3-book series.  All three books are short and fast reads, about 1 to 1 1/2 hour each. I would like to see Cornell publish them as a single book.  I was able to get the second book from our Michigan wide Melcat library system.

4 Stars

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Kingfisher – Fantasy with Subtle Magic – Patricia McKillip

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Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite authors for her atmospheric novels that combine down to earth characters with love and forgiveness, wispy magic, inexplicable happenings, good and evil and pure imagination.  Kingfisher uses the Grail myth as a theme on top of a world that combines magic in the foggy coast, a basilisk cum temptress, humor, a traffic-snarled bridge, a castle’s kitchen plus characters seeking for themselves and their hearts.

If this sounds confusing, well, the novel is a bit.  I find McKillip’s plots seem to have small (or large) holes that I simply overlook, jump in the torrent and move along with the characters.  We get bewildered together. (I re-read Kingfisher as I do most of her novels and the plot was clearer and more seamless the second time.)

Kingfisher is no exception.  Don’t expect detailed explanations of how the world is set up, or seamless transitions.  Things happen.  Characters do things, sometimes for reasons even they don’t understand.  It’s real life.

People

Our main character Pierce is a straight arrow who somehow finds himself taking a knife from an inn (actually he left his credit card so it wasn’t technically stealing – or so he told himself).  Pierce and his brother Val are the down-to-earth characters that McKillip uses to move the story along, while the main plot revolves bastard prince Daimon and the secondary plot has Carrie contending with Stillwater for the soul of the town and family.

Kingfisher is about people, with magic and its world providing part of the challenge and decorating the main thrust, which is the tangle between family, loyalty, love, forgiveness and ambition.

Daimon’s story is love fueled by enchantment augmented with glamour and sex, meant to be strong enough to set him against his father, the king whom he loves. His family – his real family, not his biological mother’s family – sends Dame Scotia to watch over him and she entangles herself in his dreams enough to break them both free of the enchantment.

Magic and World Building

McKillip’s magic is understated.  Pierce and Val are children of a powerful sorceress and she works magic to free them from the basilisk who holds their father. Chef Stillwater uses magic and malice to imprison an entire town feeding them food that looks beautiful but is empty of flavor and nutrition.  The Ravenhold women use glamour to enchant first the king, then his son.

Everyone accepts magic as real and powerful, but we never see how it works or whether only some have the ability.  It’s a fact of life, not the be-all and end-all of the novel.

Kingfisher’s world is our world complete with cell phones and bad traffic plus magic and a plethora of gods and goddesses.  McKillip doesn’t spend time telling us much about this world beyond letting us feel its familiarity.

We are in the Kingdom of Wyvernhold, which has knights and tournaments on special occasions; think of England but with the full-color ceremonial trappings that have meaning, and are not just decorations. The king mentions that one reason he wants to promote the Quest is that now with times so good, some of his subjects are restless and looking for trouble, wanting their own tiny domains’ independence.

Summary

Most of McKillip’s novels have gorgeous covers and Kingfisher’s is a bit blah; maybe she felt the modern setting needed a more modern cover picture.  That’s about my only quibble.  Some Amazon reviewers complained about the lack of a clear magic system or more explicit world building but I don’t agree.

Kingfisher is about people caught up in snarls due to love and loyalty with magic adding twists.  It is a fantasy because it is set in another world and there is some magic in the background.  I always feel tossed in the middle of McKillip’s fantasy novels, like I should know these people, these situations.  Kingfisher is no exception.  It is overall excellent.

5 Stars

Day of the Dragonking – Speeding Fantasy Goes A Bit Off the Rails

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Day of the Dragonking starts with a bang.  Steve Rowan sees and feels an airplane crash right outside his apartment.  He sees and hears the passengers and the crew, sees three people turn over tarot cards to cause the crash, sees the crash site furrow in his parking lot.  Yet he doesn’t see it.  There are no fireball, no emergency response vehicles, no television trucks.

This crash happened and it didn’t happen.  A mysterious cabal used the sacrifice of 400+ people to power the Change, bringing magic into the world.  Main character Steve assumes the avatar of tarot character The Fool with the Fool’s powers and weaknesses and is pulled into a runaway mess with female Seal Ace Morningstar, sentient NSA computer Barnaby and haunted cell phone Send Money.

Day of the Dragonking is non-stop action, sometimes running so fast that it wobbles.  It isn’t clear who the villians are, we hear of The Illuminati, but we hear they are only the side show, that Someone Else wants to wake up the World Serpent with a truly horrific sacrifice of 100,000 lives.

Meanwhile Steve and Ace plus cell phone and other characters picked up along the way are rushing around Washington DC trying to understand and help corral the Change.

I enjoyed the first part of the book when we meet the characters and the pace is slow enough that we can be bewildered right along with Steve and can share the terror and worry.  About a third into the novel the pace increases and gets a little harder to follow.  Also I found I really didn’t care.  The story switched from people-centric to event-centric and got a little silly around the edges.

A Bit Too Fast and A Bit Too Much

For example, somewhere author Edward B. Irving tells us that Steve’s cell phone is special because it contains the soul? memories? personality? of a dead Chinese Apple employee called Send Money.  I managed to miss this and it seemed as if the phone went from the anonymous “my phone” to “Send Money” without a blink.

Barnaby tells Steve and Ace that the Change centered in Washington DC, where the plane crashed, and that the effect is radiating outwards.  Yet all the computers in California and China, Russia and around the world are Changed immediately.

Irving doesn’t explain or show us what is happening to the rest of humanity.  Some folks apparently were tagged immediately by The Villians to stop Steve and Ace, but we don’t know how this happened or why the people went along with it.  The military detachment merely presents itself, declares they will stop Steve and Ace, Ace fights them and wins and we go on.  Huh?  Who got to these guys so fast and how?

There are some ha-ha/funny comments about Congress and lobbyists and such becoming elves or dwarves or trolls, but we never see this, we only hear about it.  Some reviewers commented on the political satire, but I expect to see something, not merely hear about it 3rd hand for satire.

Characters

At first I liked Steve Rowan and he was the best of a middling lot.  Steve is a 3rd rate journalist, twice-divorced, lonely and doesn’t believe in much.  Shoved into a corner he quickly picks up the basic Fool powers and manages to work magic by focusing on the tarot card.  Ace warns him against using blood magic, whether it’s his blood or from others’ but Steve doesn’t really believe her.  He uses blood magic three times before he realizes he just made a mistake, that the blood magic is addictive.

Ace Morningstar is a female Seal (at a time when only men could qualify).  She used her pre-Change magic to masquerade as a man and her own determination and ability to hone her skills to a frightening level.  No one realized she was a woman until another magic user saw through her glamour.  Ace is tough, smart, ferocious and single minded.  Her charge, as she reminds Steve, is his safety yes, but Send Money – the cell phone – even before Steve the living human.

Ace has magic and plenty of experience with it before the Change, but lost the magic in the Change.  She still has the knowledge and experience and understand the Tarot analogies and avatars.  Irving does a good job with Ace acting as both character and explainer-to-the-audience and to Steve.

Setting

The action takes place in Washington DC, mostly on or near the Mall.  I’m not familiar with the locale but the vivid descriptions made it easy to follow.  I loved the description of the Potemkin building the CIA quickly threw together to confuse any lurking enemies.

Summary

The Day of the Dragonking was middling good to good with some rough patches in the plot that made it hard to follow and harder to care about the characters.  The Kindle version I got could use serious copyediting as there are many copy/paste errors and formatting problems.

While I enjoyed the book overall I may or may not read the sequels.  If Irving is done with the set up then the subsequent books may flow better and make more sense.  He may be able to show the Washington Beltway satire too and help us care about the people.

Irving writes well with interesting phases and has a vivid imagination to create an intricate world similar to but far different from our own.  Dialogue is a little weak, especially between Ace and Steve.

3 1/2 Stars

I received a free copy of Day of the Dragonking from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.