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Title:
Spellbound
Series: Grimnoir Chronicles
#2
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 5 of
5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages:
402
Words: 150K
Publish: 2011
Another
home run. This Grimnoir trilogy just hits all my good buttons and I’m
as happy as a clam.
There’s threats from a government agency, there’s threats from the Imperium (japanese), there are threats from other Actives (what magical users are called in this trilogy) and finally, you have threats on a cosmic scale.
Correia does a good job of balancing all of the threats, while expanding the cast of characters. We also get a good twist with one of the Imperial Iron Men (the ultimate bad guys in the previous book) helping out the Grimnoir because he knows the cosmic threat is real and only the Grimnoir are taking it seriously.
When I read this back in ‘13 I had an extremely visceral reaction to the first reveal of the major villain of the book, code named Crow. It was so intense that I had to put the book down back then for an entire day. I was extremely interested in how I would react this time. Oh man. I reacted the exact same way. Even down to putting the book down for 24hrs. I knew what was coming, but even so, it hit me like a runaway freight train. It’s good to know that some things about me haven’t changed.
The book ends in such a way that I kind of wondered if Correia had modeled it after The Empire Strikes Back, the second movie in the Star Wars trilogy. The good guys strike a dramatic blow but in the end are still scattered and on their own. That didn’t stand out to me last time and even now, I wonder if I’m reaching, but boy, it really had that feeling. In all fairness, it might also just be Correia using that kind of trope and not necessarily aping ESB directly. But he’s a couple of years older than me and could have seen ESB in the theatres and it would have struck him deeper than it did me. Who knows. It’s vague and baseless speculations like this that make re-reading so much fun :-D
The final battle was awesome. The Grimnoir, the cops, the airforce, all fighting against a demon god of a previously devoured world. And it all comes down to little ol’ Faye to stop it. Jake Sullivan the smart heavy can’t do it. Toru the renegade Iron Man can’t do it. Not even a full squadron of the American Airforce/Navy can do it. But Faye does it and she does it smart. That’s what I like about these books so much, the characters might make mistakes, but they aren’t obvious author created mistakes just to create hardship or drama. Or because the author is a stupid twit who can’t write themselves out of a brown paper bag. So go Correia, keep those smart characters coming!
★★★★★
From the Publisher
The Grimnoir Society’s mission is to protect people with magic, and they’ve done so—successfully and in secret—since the mysterious arrival of the Power in the 1850s, but when a magical assassin makes an attempt on the life of President Franklin Roosevelt, the crime is pinned on the Grimnoir. The knights must become fugitives while they attempt to discover who framed them.
Thing go from bad to worse when Jake Sullivan, former p.i. and knight of the Grimnoir, receives a telephone call from a dead man—a man he helped kill.. Turns out the Power jumped universes because it was fleeing from a predator that eats magic and leaves destroyed worlds in its wake. That predator has just landed on Earth.
