Rating: 2.5🌈
It’s been a while since I’d read the Warder series, books about a clutch of 5 Warders or demon hunters/city protectors and their sentinel . Each novel focuses on one Warder and his path to finding his Hearth, his soulmate.
I enjoyed them , finding some couples more entertaining than others, but a wonderful series.
However, Trick of Light didn’t live up to my expectations. It starts promising, with all the Warders, their Hearths, the Sentinel and his partner gathered together when they discover ,they as a group , are under attack.
Calmes assumes the reader is familiar with the group, the couples history , and their relationships, and the series as a whole. That’s a lot of information you must have to go forward here. It makes sense as this is book 7.
I didn’t mind that so much as a series with this many novels would be cumbersome if the author had to recreate all the previous storylines as well as the current ones to bring a reader up to speed.
No this book lost me with the reveals and narrative twists into let’s say a more angelic themed story. Calmes , imo, just never laid a firm foundation in terms of her themes, her history, even character development and background, to support the events that occur in the later stages of this book.
Some are so groundless, the actions making so little sense , no matter how you might literally frame it out that I was astonished. And not in a good way.
And once written, the following consequences were, well, inevitably worse. Like storyboard cards that fell , then rearranged up on the board out of order. No one noticed.
I enjoy Calmes writing. I didn’t enjoy Trick of Light. For me, it added little to a entertaining series, and may actually have removed some of those interesting elements I liked so much.
But I found this poorly written, with the too much “as told too” narrative, a real issue with a lack of context within the series arc for the themes here, and no grounding for the events that occur during most of the story.
The whole last quarter of this book is narrative nonsense imo. Without giving away too much, if your premise is that angels don’t understand emotions including love but all they do display is emotion, jealousy, hatred, anger, etc, then as a author you haven’t understood how to express your own themes throughly yourself. Your angels should BE without emotion. They aren’t. You haven’t been able to see your way through your own characters.
Others might have different opinions.
I’ll leave it up to you whether it’s a story you want to read.
Warder series:
✓ His Hearth #1
✓ Tooth & Nail #2
✓ Heart in Hand #3
✓ Sinnerman #4
✓ Nexus #5
✓ Cherish Your Name #6
✓ Trick of Light #7
Buy Link:
Trick Of Light (Warders Book 7)
Description:
Jackson Tybalt is living his best life even though, to others, it might sound a little odd. For starters, Jackson’s a warder. Duty bound to patrol the city of San Francisco, doing battle with demons and things that go bump in the night. Second, Jackson’s married to an ex-demonic bounty hunter.
Raphael Caliva isn’t quite a man, more of a creature, with a very normal job as a general contractor, which he really loves. But what Raphael loves most, though, is Jackson. So much so that he’s sealed his fate to Jackson’s. If one dies, so does the other. No muss, no fuss.
This is the first of the surprises Jackson receives when he and his fellow warders meet one cold afternoon in February. Turns out, a blood witch they believed they’d vanquished has returned, intent on revenge. Nothing is as it seems, and now Jackson and the others have to prepare to fight not only an elusive enemy, but also the fatal curse she imparted.
But sometimes, it’s not quite as bad as it seems. More a trick of light than life and death. Or is it?
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 