I don’t usually review books I don’t finish. Since I read 5 to 10 books a week and review only a couple, I put most effort into books I like or ARCs. I’m making an exception for Obsidian Son, the first novel in a four-part series by Shane Silvers. Obsidian Son sounds so good and has great reviews on Amazon, a fun premise, neat cover. It’s all there, everything except the book itself.
The story starts off with our hero, Nate Temple, wizard, bookstore owner, super rich young fellow and recent orphan, sneaking up on the Minotaur to engage in a bit of cow tipping. He gets smeared with cow dung, arrested, interrogated by the police, released. When he gets home to have a drink with his two best friends he simply tosses his coat into the laundry basket and makes drinks – without washing up. Sorry, that was hard to take.
The main character is a sophomoric jerk with an overabundance of ego and a nasty attitude about women. (Quote: “To women and careers and the men who ride them.”) Yet this same character hasn’t asked his office manager for a date because he might get turned down. Yeesh.
Author Silver has way too heavy a hand with foreshadowing. Even without getting past the first quarter of the novel I could tell that Temple’s mysterious client is himself a dragon (he smelled like rocks and snakes), that Temple’s friend Peter was somehow corrupted by someone magic (since he had on a new bracelet and suddenly had magic abilities), that Temple will discover his parents’ company used magic as much as technology. So on. Really, how much more obvious can someone be, yet Temple, who is supposed to be super smart never notices and never even asks his buddy Peter where he got magic?
The author clearly has little to no understanding how people who have money actually use it, or what the consequences might be of flinging Aston Martin cars around to one’s friends. The main character thinks nothing of driving through red lights, speeding down urban streets and doing donuts to stop his flashy new car in front of his friend. Does anyone really think that having a fancy car means he doesn’t have to share the road? This is when I decided to pull the plug and delete Obsidian Son from my reader.
The last point is the blasphemous use of the name Jesus. This is the name of God’s only begotten Son, not some casual throw-away interjection. The author tossed a couple of these in the mix too.
Overall, 1 star. Did not finish and do not recommend.
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