I am a huge fan of Harry Dresden so I thought I'd give this a try. It took me a little while to become invested in the story, but I like the main characters. I thought the combination of rune magic and private detective skills was interesting. I will most likely continue on with the series. ( )

Until the finale, the book accomplished what it set out to do. It wasn't particularly original in its plot construction but the world at least was quite creative and it managed to bring across the noir atmosphere it was going for.

The end is a hot mess though. The book can't stop chaining twists together that get bigger and bigger.
At the end there, I wouldn't have been surprised by alien zombie-cow people trying to mind-control the government with nano-tech milk.
It's not actually that absurd but it went so far beyond anything reasonable in an effort to impress that it became laughable. Each twist had to outdo the previous one but each time it seems like the author wasn't yet satisfied with the scope and the mind blow. That is not how twists work. There are some tenuous connections to hints and breadcrumbs from earlier but they are all so vague that you could've crafted any conclusion you wanted to fit them.

tl;dr
cool world, mediocre writing, average plot, bad and absurd end. ( )

Fun SFF cozy sort of mystery. Nicely written and nice characters. ( )

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Arcane Casebook series. There are 8 books in this series right now, with the most recent one being released March 2022. I borrowed a copy of this ebook through Kindle Unlimited.

Thoughts: I wasn’t a huge fan of this book and stopped reading 70% of the way through. While some of the magic elements are interesting and the 1930’s alternate historical setting in NYC is also interesting, I just didn’t enjoy the writing style. The writing comes off as a bit stark and felt immature. I also just couldn’t engage with any of the characters very well.

The book follows Alex, a private investigator in an alternate 1930’s NYC where magic is commonplace and sorcerers run the world. Alex is a runewright, a lesser magic user, who uses runes to perform magic. Alex gets drawn into a mystery involving both a mysterious death and a strange plague. The book has a very hard-boiled noir feel to it.

I just did not like the style this book was written in and really struggled to read it; I kept having to re-read portions. The writing felt stark, simplistic and didn’t flow well. I also never engaged with the characters well. This is very obviously intended for a male audience and Alex is a bit of a lady’s man. There are some female characters in here and they were okay, but very much in the background and usually addressed as “doll” or “sweetheart” by their male counterparts.

In the end I don’t feel like this book was a good fit for me. The alternate NYC setting and rune magic was intriguing but I realized (at 70% of the way through) that I just didn’t care what was happening and was dreading sitting down to read more of this and decided to set it aside.

My Summary (3/5): Overall this wasn’t a great book and really just wasn’t for me. The writing style felt immature and simplistic and I didn’t enjoy the characters or story. Some of the magic is intriguing and the idea of an alternate historical magical NYC is fun (even if it has been done a lot already). This is very much a hard-boiled noir type of read and very much targeted at a white male audience. I didn’t care for it and won’t be continuing the series. ( )

The main character is Alex Lockerby who is a private detective in New York City 1933. Now, I admit that I am drawn to Golden Age pulps, gritty city private detectives, noir crime stories, and black & white TV shows. So, the setting and the background tipped the scales in favor of this novel. Lockerby is also a runewright, which is a type of magician, I suppose. The novel explains runewrights as sort of the mechanics and engineers of the magical world, contrasted with the fancy, high-level marvels of sorcerers. The concept of runewrights was one that I approached positively.

As other reviewers have said, there is a "tameness" to the novel. However, I am not sure that that is a bad thing or means we readers knock a star off. Maybe, in one sense, it is a sign of the writer's skill that he did not have to rely on the darker/gory/heavier styles of writing. Something to think about..... ( )