Luanne Smith - The Raven Spell: A Novel (A Conspiracy of Magic Book 1)
Blurb:
In Victorian England a witch and a detective are on the hunt for a serial killer in an enthralling novel of magic and murder by the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Vine Witch.
After a nearly fatal blow to the skull, traumatized private detective Ian Cameron is found dazed and confused on a muddy riverbank in Victorian London. Among his effects: a bloodstained business card bearing the name of a master wizard and a curious pocket watch that doesn’t seem to tell time. To retrieve his lost memories, Ian demands answers from Edwina and Mary Blackwood, sister witches with a murky past. But as their secret is slowly unveiled, a dangerous mystery emerges on the darkened streets of London.
To help piece together Ian’s lost time, he and Edwina embark on a journey that will take them from the river foreshore to an East End music hall, and on to a safe house for witches in need of sanctuary from angry mortals. The clues they find suggest a link between a series of gruesome murders, a missing person’s case, and a dreadful suspicion that threatens to tear apart the bonds of sisterhood. As the investigation deepens, could Ian and Edwina be the next to die?
Strengths and Weaknesses:
I have to be honest here but this book started off very promising and I have to be honest when I got this as Amazon first reads for January and I saw the length of the page, something like 235 pages and with the setup the first 30 or 40 pages I was sat there thinking hmm.. This is fairly good setup building and this book could heading somewhere and..
Well it didn’t, quickly the book seemed to run out of steam rapidly and the last two hundred pages took me something like 3 or so weeks to read. Yeah, it proved a struggle.
For me, this is down to the movement in the book. I don’t mind of course the action, but the movement within the plot just didn’t seen to move and there was way too much dialogue which was frankly dull and I really struggled working out who said what after a while, and if it hadn’t being for the length I very likely would have abandoned this book after 70 or 80 pages.
As pointed out by another reader on Good Reads, there was also a insistence on calling Sir Henry Elvanfoot “Sir Elvanfoot” which is bad research or bad editing you decide and I’ll keep off the bad referencing to London in the book too.
I did like the fact that was the two main characters female, but they were sadly not served well by the plot atall sadly.
4/10
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