Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Taken-Benedict Jacka

Taken


Benedict Jacka

Ace, Aug 28 2012, $7.99

ISBN 978193700772-0



Everyone involved looks forward to the White Stone tournament at Fountain Reach between Light and Dark apprentice mages. At a London Starbucks, Crystal the Light mage tries to hire freelance diviner Alex Verus to provide consulting security services at the event in which she insists the Council will provide the battle mages if needed. He realizes she is a mind mage and shocks her when he declines.



The Council’s Talisad asks Alex and his apprentice Luna to investigate the disappearances of several of the tournament participants without a trace. They head to Fountain Reach where he finds to evidence of abductions but no suspects. As he realizes his enemies want him dead too, Alex protects Luna’s classmate Anne from paranormal and human assassins while concluding that a Council member probably is behind the assaults, which means whatever he does he will end up in trouble as happened when he first became exiled from the mage world.



The excellent Alex Verus urban fantasy (see Fated and Cursed) is a superb entry as the independent diviner distrusts the mage community as the Light and Dark are partisan bickerers who insist they are always right and the Council is too impractically narrow-minded. Fast-paced, once again the key this thriller is the Benedict Jack’s world of battling mages drinking coffee in Starbucks seems real.



Harriet Klausner

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