A good book, a good read. It certainly earns its “Top Seller” sticker. It won’t make it to my personal favorites or top-tier list, but I can see why it has garnered such widespread appeal. It’s a light, very light, fantasy set in current days, in a contemporary Earth with a straightforward magic system. Perfect for non-fantasy readers or people who prefer not to be bogged down by the genre’s usual complexities. There’s very little “fantasy” to learn here, and the story remains approachable throughout. The writing, too, deserves credit, Gareth Brown does a fine job at crafting text that’s both easy to read and highly accessible. His style is refreshingly democratic, he avoids unnecessarily complex words or convoluted sentences designed solely to showcase his intellect. That’s an approach I deeply appreciate, and it’s enough to put him on my radar for future (or past) works.
As for the story itself, the pacing is fine (more on that later), and while the magic system offers nothing new, it borrows heavily from tropes seen in countless books, movies, anime, and games, it’s handled competently. The main power, in particular, has been rehashed endlessly across multiple media. Yet, Gareth Brown still manages to make it engaging, primarily by depicting how his broken (or normal) characters struggle to wield this magic. Another point in the book’s favor. A pleasant read, and one I would recommend.
But enough positivity, let’s grumble!
The pace. Here, I was the one struggling with the book. Every room, every street, every wall, every loaf of bread receives an excruciatingly detailed description. What an absolute drag. I don’t care what material the walls are made of. I don’t care about their color. Please, for the love of storytelling, get on with the plot! I understand there’s an audience out there who enjoys luxuriating in these descriptions (I suspect the author himself is among them, considering the time and effort spent describing every last detail of every scenario). But two, three, even four pages per chapter spent on these minutiae? Do we really need that? Can’t the frame of a door be summarized in a single paragraph instead of sprawling across two pages? Please? It was a slog for me. Anytime a new location or character was introduced, I had to force myself through paragraph after paragraph of florid descriptions until the actual story resumed.
The romance. Ugh. At least Gareth didn’t waste time on elaborate scenes of flirting, kissing, or worse, kudos for that. But every time a new character appeared (complete with their interminable descriptions), there was always a hint of romance lurking. A stray observation about how “handsome was his smile under this light” or “how she was so beautifully dressed.” These unnecessary tidbits sprinkled here and there did nothing for the story. They had no bearing on the plot or any later developments. Pure filler. Thankfully, the book remained mostly untouched by overt romance until the end, just a few scattered traces here and there and some promise of it at the end.
Consider the next paragraph full of spoilers.
The deathless death. Come on, is this book PG-13? After the second time a character “died” and turned out to be not-so-dead, I stopped taking any of it seriously. I lost count of how many “deaths” occurred, but it became painfully clear that named characters were impervious to permanent harm. By the middle of the book, I even started questioning whether the supposedly deceased characters from the past might also spring back to life, given how frequently this trope was employed. If you’re going to kill someone in a story, let them stay dead. If you don’t want to kill them, then don’t kill them in the first place! This overused “surprise, I’m alive” trope became irritating at breakneck speed. It stripped the story of any tension or stakes. Each time a character reappeared, I wasn’t shocked, I was rolling my eyes, already expecting their return.
The good-bad villain. Another PG-13 cliché (Perhaps this book was published by Disney?). Gareth Brown lacked the courage to let the villain simply be evil, a broken, twisted human being who chose destruction for its own sake. No, in the final pages, he had to shoehorn in a backstory about the villain as an innocent child-turned-monster. Spare me. I was enthralled by her malevolence throughout the book. I didn’t like her, but I respected the choice to make her a purely evil figure, a rarity that reflects certain grim truths about humanity. And then, in the last pages, Gareth had to pull out the tired “tragic little girl” trope, ruining her mystique. If I ever gift this book to someone, I’ll rip out those two pages first. The story would be better for it.
And that’s it. While there were plenty of aspects I didn’t enjoy, particularly the reliance on tired clichés, and how very little of the magic or other books were used, it was, overall, a solid read. Despite its flaws from my perspective, I’d still recommend it, and I’ll keep an eye on Gareth Brown’s future works, provided their themes pique my interest, of course.
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