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A review by hidekisohma
Trumps of Doom by Roger Zelazny
3.0
So i saw this book at a half-price book store on clearance and i figured, eh, what the hell. i haven't read a book in this series before, but it was short, cheap, and i liked the style he wrote in, so i thought i'd give it a shot. There were definitely some positives in this book such as the afformentioned writing style. it was short, sweet, and didn't rely too heavily on descriptors. As for the story itself, despite being the sixth in the series i understood what was going on pretty fast. Magical guy lives in the real world, every day on April 30th, something tries to kill him and it's now April 30th. He has a protector spell on his arm and he can make things called "Trumps" which are cards that act like teleporters to a specific place. Not too hard to get.
The book was crazy short. like 180 pages short, and this is where the problems begin show. First of all, without spoiling, the book ends on a cliffhanger. I'm sitting here going, "well, yeah, maybe if your book wasn't 180 pages, you wouldn't have to end it on a cliffhanger." It definitely feels like he probably should have just combined books 6 and 7 together (book 6 is 180 pages and book 7 is 210) you probably could have made that one book bro.
While descriptions aren't abound he sure does love sitting down and talking to people in this book. That seems to be a very prevalent thing with this author. Eating with someone at a restaurant and talking. That's a lot of this book.
However, maybe that's a reason this book is only 180 pages. Because it's so short, these scenes don't overstay their welcome. if he doubled the length with descriptions in these scenes i probably would have dropped it.
The main character is...all right. He's not very notable and doesn't really have a very interesting personality, but at least he doesn't irritate me. He's just kind of a blank slate. It's kind of sad that i'm happy for a blank slate at this point in my urban fantasy novels. After dealing with Captain Gary Stu in the Nightside series and Chauvenist Mcgee Harry Dresden, it's nice to have a character that's bland. Oh how my standards have fallen.
Because of how short the books are and the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger, i'm definitely going to read at least one more book to see where this particular plot goes. overall, not bad for a random book in a random series. Not great, but short enough to not be annoying and with a moderately interesting magic system. solid 3/5.
The book was crazy short. like 180 pages short, and this is where the problems begin show. First of all, without spoiling, the book ends on a cliffhanger. I'm sitting here going, "well, yeah, maybe if your book wasn't 180 pages, you wouldn't have to end it on a cliffhanger." It definitely feels like he probably should have just combined books 6 and 7 together (book 6 is 180 pages and book 7 is 210) you probably could have made that one book bro.
While descriptions aren't abound he sure does love sitting down and talking to people in this book. That seems to be a very prevalent thing with this author. Eating with someone at a restaurant and talking. That's a lot of this book.
However, maybe that's a reason this book is only 180 pages. Because it's so short, these scenes don't overstay their welcome. if he doubled the length with descriptions in these scenes i probably would have dropped it.
The main character is...all right. He's not very notable and doesn't really have a very interesting personality, but at least he doesn't irritate me. He's just kind of a blank slate. It's kind of sad that i'm happy for a blank slate at this point in my urban fantasy novels. After dealing with Captain Gary Stu in the Nightside series and Chauvenist Mcgee Harry Dresden, it's nice to have a character that's bland. Oh how my standards have fallen.
Because of how short the books are and the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger, i'm definitely going to read at least one more book to see where this particular plot goes. overall, not bad for a random book in a random series. Not great, but short enough to not be annoying and with a moderately interesting magic system. solid 3/5.