Monday 30 April 2012

(Review) Dark Magic by James Swain

Genre: Fantasy
Publication Date: May 22, 2012
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Format: ebook (ARC)
Source: NetGalley
Rating: 3/5
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary:
Peter Warlock is a magician with a dark secret. Every night, he amazes audiences at his private theater in New York, where he performs feats that boggle the imagination. But his day job is just a cover for his otherworldly pursuits: Peter is a member of an underground group of psychics who gaze into the future to help prevent crimes. No one, not even his live-in girlfriend, knows the truth about Peter—until the séance when he foresees an unspeakable act of violence that will devastate the city. As Peter and his friends rush to prevent tragedy, Peter discovers that a shadowy cult of evil psychics, the Order of Astrum, know all about his abilities. They are hunting him and his fellow psychics down, one by one, determined to silence them forever.

Dark Magic is a genre-bending supernatural thriller from national bestselling novelist and real-life magician James Swain.

My Opinion:
The story started out with a vision that something bad was about to happen and had the group scrambling to try to stop it. That's an interesting start in my opinion. The story progresses slowly after that and centers around Peter, a magician and a member of the underground psychic group. Nobody knew about this group of psychic, not even his girlfriend. There was an attempted attack at his own performance that had the police coming and there were some questionings. Then, several members of his psychic group was attacked and Peter must rush to catch the culprit before even more ends up dead.

The story picks up somewhere in the 3rd quarter of the book and I really couldn't put the book down. It is also interesting to read Peter's psychic abilities and how he was able to use it. This is an enjoyable book and it would be really great if the pacing of the story was consistent.

This book is recommended to those who loves magic with some dose of suspense in it.


Disclosure: An eARC copy was received from Tor/Forge through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review. No monetary reward was received for this review.

More about the author: James Swain
James Swain is the national best selling author of fourteen mystery novels, and has been published in the United States, France, Japan, Russia, Germany and Bulgaria. His books have been chosen as Mysteries of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and have received three Barry Award nominations, a Florida Book Award for Fiction, and France’s prestigious Prix Calibre .38 for Best American Crime Fiction. His Tony Valentine series was recently purchased by Langley Films (Cops, Brookyln’s Finest) with the author set to write the screenplay.


Swain recently released four original novels as ebooks – Jackpot & Wild Card (part of the Tony Valentine series), The Program (Jack Carpenter series), and The Man Who Cheated Death (Vincent Hardare series). In the fall of 2011 he will be launching a new thriller series with Tor Books called Dark Magic.


Along with writing novels, the author is considered one of the world’s foremost sleight-of-hand artists, and an authority on gambling cons and swindles. (Taken from Goodreads)

Website: http://www.jimswain.com/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JSwainAuthor
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/James-Swain/156924911009199

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