David B. Coe

3.5 stars. I liked the characters, or at least appreciated them (some are terrible people). The main character (the only one written in first person) is the girl we first meet. The other point of view characters are told in third person, and they're quite an assortment. I dislike when writers use so many, but that's just me. I'd recommend this to any teen reader, but particularly queer teens. Understated representation, I love to see it.

There's one timeline flaw that I noticed, the rest of the plot hangs together pretty well. Some parts were a little boring for me, but I am not a Young Adult, the target audience, so I just skimmed a bit here & there. I don't regret reading it, which is very important! I liked how embedded in the world the powers were, how each action had consequences, and I liked the best how the kids reasoned their way through each problem.

Given that federal agents are often armed, there is on-page violence. But the kids do as little as they can get away with, aware of consequences.… (meer)

Ethan Kaille is a thieftaker and also a spellcaster who  conjure spells that helps him solve crimes in Colonial Boston. Being a conjurer isn't something the law sees kindly on so he gets a bit taken back when the sheriff asks him to help two merchants who have trouble with a sea captain who is threatening their lives. But he soon finds out that the merchants have not told him everything...

I think I'm a tiny bit in love with Ethan Kaille, just look at the cover to this prequel to the first book and also the cover to the first book that I added *swoon*...I know, I know, looks isn't everything, thank heaven then that he is a really interesting character also!




I was glad to read this prequel  since that got me a chance to see if this series is any good, now I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the first book...and the second and so on...

Thanks I for the link to the short story! … (meer)

Just a quick little note here, since this empty review was looking sad. I felt a bit bad giving the book only three stars, but...it's the book I would have wanted to read when I was younger. Magic and revolutionary Boston? How cool is that?!

Pretty darn, but a couple things kept me from being 100% happy.

First and foremost was that this was not the first book--it's either the third or the fourth, though I was unclear on which, since the author's bio and list of previously published works seemed to contradict each other. There was no indication that it wasn't the first in a series. It wasn't too hard to read without having read the others, but I still felt cheated, like the lack of a big #3 or #4 on the front denied me the chance to say, "You know, this sounds cool, I think I'll start the series properly."

Really, the series sounds great. There were so many interesting-sounding back stories woven into this one that I'm almost afraid they don't all fit in two or three previous books. Ethan Kaille's had an interesting life that I'd like to hear more about--his age and real (as opposed to Gary-Stu-like) imperfection make him interesting.

The same cannot be said of the women characters. Five are named, two are gorgeous, two are pretty, and one is old. Thanks, thanks a lot for reducing a little more than half of humanity to a handful of worn old stereotypes: the trouser-wearing femme fatale, the beautiful and devoted lover, the crazy old black lady spouting wisdom, the girls who need protecting. What's most frustrating is that there are seeds of originality in each that could make them remarkable enough to hold their own...but the narrative denies them that chance and reduces them to either a plot point or a wet dream (almost literally, at one point). I was especially enraged when one of the women forgot that her gun couldn't shoot more than once. If there were any firearms at the time that could do so, that wouldn't be a thing you'd forget. The default of the time would be to assume that you only had one shot.

A lot of the supporting male characters were interesting, and the women were too, it was just frustrating that they couldn't be held in more equal narrative standing. Still, I would like to read more about all of them. Maybe someday I'll pick up the first and start from the beginning.… (meer)