Posted by Hello all you fine people. I’m late to another review, but what else is new?
I have really enjoyed books by this author in the past and so I had every intention of reading this earlier this year… but then inevitably my life went bananas and I’ve read almost nothing outside of the SPFBO books I’ve been assigned. I’m catching up just in time for the release of book 2 which comes out today!
This is an urban fantasy coming of age kind of book that would probably appeal most to people who enjoy that kind of a story. The book starts out with the main character running away from a cultist life style, trying to take his could-be girlfriend with him. As you may imagine, things don’t go as planned when the cult leaders show up to try and stop him. This was giving off pretty hardcore Davidian vibes with a group of people all living on a compound like environment where the boys are kicked out as they enter “marrying age” and no one is allowed to be alone together until they’re married. Corbin has a special power that lets him see “the ones who can be saved” and so he has a particular value to this cult, and the leader, Gideon, is determined to keep him.
This is a world where magic is real but most people don’t know about it. There are a lot of punishments that can come of telling the wrong person about your abilities, and the person you shared your secret with will share in your punishment. Within the magic users there are two main schools of thought and they go about their magic and their lives much differently from one another, and they hold different territories within America. Since Corbin grew up in a sheltered cult and then gets ushered into the world of The Circle and magic users, there’s a fair bit of info dumping to explain to Corbin how things work. This isn’t my most favorite way to do world building, but at least it made sense in context. There were other aspects to the world building that were more subtle and not so in our face. As far as the world, there’s vampires but maybe not in the way you think, demons are real but angels are not, and who knows about god.
The writing was pretty smooth and fast paced and you can tell the author has written other books. There’s a fair amount of pop culture references and I’m pretty sure many of them went over my head, but if you really like indie music there are a few references I did pick up on. There’s also a lot of 90s kid references in here as well. The book is set in 2008 and that’s right about the time I was graduating college and so that era in time is firmly cemented in my brain and it was neat to see random stuff pop up — your mileage may vary depending on your age and music tastes.
The second book came out today so if you’ve already read an enjoyed this one you could go on to the next in the series!
