Book Review: Black Spark, by Al K. Line

This is the first book in the Dark Magic Enforcer series.  I noticed it was available to read for free with Amazon Prime, so I took a chance on it.  I'm a big fan of The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, and those books are taking quite a while to come out these days (2.5 years since the last one came out, probably at least a year until the next one comes out), and I've been hungry for similar reading fare since May of 2014.  This seemed to fit the bill, so I decided to try it.

First off, this is VERY different from The Dresden Files.  The setup of the world is similar:  there are different councils, there are vampires, imps, fae, trolls, witches, and other magical creatures, but things take place in the real world.  The terminology for similar things is different.  In this series, all magical creatures and users of magic are called Hidden, and the usage of magic has some consequences.  There are a few other similarities, and perhaps story structure (sidekicks, friends, etc), but that is where the similarity ends.

The protagonist is not a detective, he is a Dark Magic Enforcer, and his name is Faz Pound.  His job is to track down troublemakers.  The story is told in the first person, and there is a ton of what I refer to as narration, for lack of a better word.  The protagonist speaks to us.  And speaks to us.  And speaks to us.  It isn't simple narration - it is like Faz is having a casual conversation with the reader.  He asks questions, and ultimately answers them on his own, or acknowledges that the reader doesn't know what he's talking about.  While explaining something, Faz frequently goes off on various tangents and explains those, and these tangents don't necessarily have much relevance to what is currently happening in the story.  It seemed like there was no dialogue at all in the first several chapters, and when dialogue did appear, it was very brief.

I found this writing style very irritating initially, and I had to take frequent breaks from this book.  With the lack of dialogue, and all of the prose, the story did not progress very quickly.  Things finally start to pick up, interestingly enough around the halfway point.  Some characters who will likely be around for some time in future stories turn up (an imp, a potential love interest, etc), and then some details begin to become clearer.  Things start to happen more quickly, and there is more dialogue - but the long sections of narration continue to intrude.

When I first started this book, I was thinking I was not going to finish it. The pace was very slow. After completing it, I can say that I was glad I read it.  The story was different enough from The Dresden Files, and the details of magic usage and the world are different and interesting, and there were some nice touches.  Enough of the world has been introduced that I am interested in seeing more.

My hope is that future volumes flesh out the character a bit more, and have more actual story content and less of the continuous monologues from Faz, and more dialogue and action.  It seemed like it took 50 to 100 pages to accomplish a single task of visiting someone due to all the monologue.  It occurs to me that this may be why so many people did not like the theatrical release of the movie Blade Runner - many found the narration of Harrison Ford to be irritating (myself, it didn't bother me, because there wasn't much of it, and it made it like an old-style detective story - but I like both the original and the Director's Cut).  At some point I will check out volume 2, and I hope that it captures my interest more.