The fact that most of this book takes the place of a single day is a little dizzying for me. And I'd prefer to hear more funnier stories of her new occopation as Arbitrator instead of just throwing her straight into the nitty gritty.

But I really loved this book.
Quite a different pace than the first book, and a lot higher stakes, and a lot more relying on luck. But that makes sense I suppose..

Can't wait for the 3rd book!

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..

A generous three-star

A fair amount of plotholes, a bland main character who can't seem to make up his if he believes in justice or if he's just too cowardly to actually uphold said justice.

From the very beginning it was portrayed pretty heavily that this new world wasn't very just, that the common man was nothing but pawns to be killed. Apparently that wasn't enough for the MC to commit to changing things, but finding out that the system itself is corrupt was some sort of final heartbreak.

Not that said corruption makes sense. I mean, obviously what amounts of exp from dead bodies it isn't a far stretch that part of the war that they send hundreds and hundreds of untrained boys into is all about harvesting as much exp as possible. But if they only get 1/16th of the exp needed to level up from a body, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they'd massacre a bunch of level 0s for their exp instead of just.. yknow.. slaying the monsters the war is supposed to be about.

Unless it's some sort of "we can't beat them so we're feeding the ugly monsters so they wont destroy all of humanity".

Either way, there are better books with this concept out there and this one just kept falling flat.