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perid0t 's review for:
A Grimoire for Gamblers
by Amanda Creiglow
I'm always very excited when I discover a new author that writes Urban Fantasy well. And I was fairly blown away by A Grimoire for Gamblers.
I found it to have a fairly unique premise in a world where Wizards are the supernatural worlds boogeymen, policing them to a degree. And long ago a treaty was made, keeping the humans ignorant, the supernatural glamored and the Wizards running things. Only, you don't need to be a born Wizard to do magic. Any human can, if they're willing to do the tedious work that comes naturally to Wizards.
Grimorie for Gamblers is about Normal Human Elizabeth who knows nothing about magic or the supernatural, stumbling headfirst into the supernatural. She doesn't do this by fully believing it, nor fully believing she's gone insane. No no, Liz is a pragmatic sort where "I better just check this out in case I'm not insane, and if I AM insane then it doesn't matter"
And you go quickly from dabbling a little, to dealing with powers far greater than her.
Elizabeth survives by pure luck and a little smarts. She makes allies, but they're bittersweet because they're not friends, they're not instantly good guys fighting for the cause, but rather along for their own reasons, reasons that sometimes goes against what Elizabeth herself wants.
I found that refreshing, it wasn't black and white, it wasn't "either we're BFF from the start or I will kill you", it was "okay I need you, and I know you're doing some scheming of your own and I'll deal with that later"
And what was more refreshing. Was the lack of romance. Elizabeth isn't a single main character thirsting after every person she meets. No no, she's already in an committed relationship with a man she loves. He happens to be out of the country for the period of the first book but he's mentioned a few times and it is clear she loves him.
This is a.. unusual take. We do get to see more interactions with him in the second book, but almost every other book out there you always get to see the START of an relationship, the falling in love and how they make a relationship works.
This relationship already works. It's steady. There's just the tiny little part where he might think she's crazy if she tells him she can now do magic. But yknow.. small details..
I found it to have a fairly unique premise in a world where Wizards are the supernatural worlds boogeymen, policing them to a degree. And long ago a treaty was made, keeping the humans ignorant, the supernatural glamored and the Wizards running things. Only, you don't need to be a born Wizard to do magic. Any human can, if they're willing to do the tedious work that comes naturally to Wizards.
Grimorie for Gamblers is about Normal Human Elizabeth who knows nothing about magic or the supernatural, stumbling headfirst into the supernatural. She doesn't do this by fully believing it, nor fully believing she's gone insane. No no, Liz is a pragmatic sort where "I better just check this out in case I'm not insane, and if I AM insane then it doesn't matter"
And you go quickly from dabbling a little, to dealing with powers far greater than her.
Elizabeth survives by pure luck and a little smarts. She makes allies, but they're bittersweet because they're not friends, they're not instantly good guys fighting for the cause, but rather along for their own reasons, reasons that sometimes goes against what Elizabeth herself wants.
I found that refreshing, it wasn't black and white, it wasn't "either we're BFF from the start or I will kill you", it was "okay I need you, and I know you're doing some scheming of your own and I'll deal with that later"
And what was more refreshing. Was the lack of romance. Elizabeth isn't a single main character thirsting after every person she meets. No no, she's already in an committed relationship with a man she loves. He happens to be out of the country for the period of the first book but he's mentioned a few times and it is clear she loves him.
This is a.. unusual take. We do get to see more interactions with him in the second book, but almost every other book out there you always get to see the START of an relationship, the falling in love and how they make a relationship works.
This relationship already works. It's steady. There's just the tiny little part where he might think she's crazy if she tells him she can now do magic. But yknow.. small details..