(NOTE: I received a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.)
Audiobook review. Narrator: Andrew Tell
4.5 stars, rounded up to 5
This was a fun, easy read. It is book 1 in a new offshoot series of the Bowl Of Souls. I am not familiar with the other books in the Bowl of Souls series so I had no idea of what to expect in this book. It takes place in our world but with ‘magic’ crossing over from another world. It’s a missing person mystery on the surface, but gets complicated when Tallow Jones, Wizard Detective, enters the picture to help the police in their missing person search.
A plot twist, which happens about 2/3 rds of the way through, really took me by surprise. I love it when an author can do that, although maybe if I were familiar with the Bowl Of Souls universe I wouldn’t have been so shocked by the turn of events.
The narrator also did a fantastic job with the different voices of the characters. I was never confused by who was doing the talking.
My only issue with the book, which is why I knocked it down by a 1/2 star, is that there were several places with point-of-view (POV) shifting without any natural break. In Chapter 6, for example, Doug and Ross, the two police detectives, are discussing Tallow Jones and it is from Doug’s POV. Doug then gets a phone call and the POV suddenly switches from Doug to Ross. Now the reader is inside Ross’ head, with Ross thinking he felt uncomfortable. There’s another place I marked in Chapter 12, but I don’t want to detail that here as it would contain spoilers. The switches are pretty quick, and overall mostly minor, with it flipping for just a sentence or two and then back. Most readers probably won’t notice it, but it’s something that jumps out at me and I can’t ignore it.
The story is pretty much self contained but left open for more to be written in the series; I look forward to the next book and hope it will also be in audiobook form.