My FIve Word TL:DR Review : I Didn’t Love This One

This is one of the books I requested last year that was derailed when family issues took centre stage.  I’m trying to catch up with some of my backlist books this year and with that in mind bought the audio for this one so that I could read and listen to it.  To be fair, although I didn’t love it this was an easy read.  It has plenty of wit, interesting magic and characters that are both bad and good and this is an author that I really like and enjoy his sense of humour.

The narrator is Cade Ombra, a mercenary wonderist who isn’t as bad as he likes to think.  Basically, anyone who practices magic is known as a wonderist.  The magic is fuelled, if you will, by different elements or in Cade’s case, the demonic realm.  Cade can summon demons, in particular he has one demon that acts as his agent and supplies him with magical spells – although this is in exchange for other goods – nothing is free.  As the story begins Cade and the other wonderists are at the end of their current mission, basically warring and murdering and are offered a new and lucrative mission, one that Cade is not keen to engage with given it’s deadly nature.  Long story short Cade winds up being hijacked into the mission and he sets off with his buddy (of sorts) and a couple of others in search of some other team members  Seven is the magic number after all.

So, my thoughts and feelings are as follows.

I love the writing and the sense of humour and this isn’t really a surprise for me with this particular author as I already know that I enjoy his style.

This is one of those cheeky, tongue in cheek type stories that isn’t afraid to poke fun at some of the tropes.  On top of this the characters don’t fall into that ‘all out good or bad’ bracket.  There are plenty of grey areas here.  Cade for example keeps things from his fellow wonderists, secrets that he is afraid would make them think less of him.  But.although this story relies on a good dose of humour this is balanced out by an equal dose of grimdark, death and blood.

Something about this author always gives me a swashbuckling feel to his stories and that’s also something I really like.

I think the plot was a little thin however and although we had skirmishes along the way I felt my concentration waning at certain points.  Like I said, I had no problem reading this but at the same time there were definite highs and lows and times where I felt the plot was in need of some strengthening.

Overall, I certainly didn’t dislike this book.  It was definitely an easy read but on balance I prefer the latest series by this author – the Court of Shadows.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.

The above is my own opinion.

My rating 3.5 of 5 stars