I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. And honest I shall be!
The Book:
The Sorcery Code: Book 1 by Dima Zales
I listened to some of this book and read some of it. From the first few seconds into the audio version, I regretted that decision.
The narrator sounds like she would be amazing for children's books. I can imagine her reading Charlotte's Web and it would be amazing.
Listening to that voice talk about the naked woman and hearing the man who created her trying to fight his attraction makes it feel creepy. I want to say, "Gross!!! She's a newborn, dude! No!"
The narrator is good, but not for this book. Listen to a sample and see for yourself if you love audio books, like me.
Onto the actual book-
The description reads thus:
From a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author comes a captivating tale of intrigue, love, and danger in a world where sorcery is entwined with science . . .That about sums it up. It opens up with a PERFECT NAKED WOMAN on a workshop floor. Blaise is trying not to be attracted to the "object" he created to make magic accessible to all.
Once a respected member of the Sorcerer Council and now an outcast, Blaise has spent the last year of his life working on a special magical object. The goal is to allow anyone to do magic, not just the sorcerer elite. The outcome of his quest is unlike anything he could’ve ever imagined – because, instead of an object, he creates Her.
She is Gala, and she is anything but inanimate. Born in the Spell Realm, she is beautiful and highly intelligent – and nobody knows what she’s capable of. She will do anything to experience the world . . . even leave the man she is beginning to fall for.
Augusta, a powerful sorceress and Blaise’s former fiancée, sees Blaise’s deed as the ultimate hubris and Gala as an abomination that must be destroyed. In her quest to save the human race, Augusta will forge new alliances, becoming tangled in a web of intrigue that stretches further than any of them suspect. She may even have to turn to her new lover Barson, a ruthless warrior who might have an agenda of his own . . .
Despite the grossness of making a "perfect" woman shaped object to hold some sort of information (oh hi 80's sci fi movies, and hi anime tropes), the magic system seems really interesting. Plus I said I'd review it, so there's that.
Blaise dwells a lot on how he intended to make a magical object. But an intelligent one. An intelligent magical object. Like a talking mirror or something.
He isn't particularly bad at magic, so I don't know why he didn't actually TRY to make something more specific, like a talking mirror...
Moving past that trope, we slam right into another. He dresses Gala in his ex-fiancee's clothes because as we all know, women only come in one size anyway.
Turns out, the ex is still alive (I don't read descriptions when I'm not paying for the book... so I didn't know that.) and she's with someone else now.
I love a good trope. I love a good cliche. I love a lot of the things that you're "not supposed to do" in a book these days. I don't mind that everyone is beautiful and perfect and heart-breakingly handsome. I don't mind that the "object" loves her creator and somehow knows some things and has no knowledge whatsoever of other things.
I honestly couldn't care about any of the characters. I think I liked Augusta best because she seemed like she was going to be a little crafty and maybe even a little mean.
The things that happen in the book should be really interesting, but it really seems like a cheesy romance novel. I was promised an action packed sci-fi fantasy epic adventure. This book didn't deliver. I've read books about knitting circles with more compelling characters. I cared more about whether they had enough yarn to finish a sweater than I cared if any of these characters achieved their goals.
The choreography of the characters is really awkward. At one point, Blaise "pulls a drop from a drawer as he hands it to Gala". There are a lot of moments like this, where the sentence doesn't work. You can't do those things at the same time. It looks okay if you don't pay too much attention. The battle scenes leave a lot to be desired, too. There is no actual sense of urgency, danger, or setting.
I am kind of bummed that my first book review is so negative. But with so many options out there in the science fiction, fantasy and even romance genres, I can't recommend it. And that makes me sad, because the idea of a sorcery "code" that only the sorcerer elite have in depth knowledge of is incredibly interesting to me.
If you're looking for something to breeze through and maybe a few moments of "hm, that sounds neat", by all means dive in. The book is free and maybe my review will lower your expectations so much that you absolutely love it.
Personally, I have too many demands on my time to pick up the next one. And I really have to wonder about the editorial reviews that say the book pulls you into non-stop action. Even most of the five star customer reviews admit that it starts off slow as everything is being explained.
I honestly didn't feel anything but the desire for it to get better, to pull me into this very interesting word. Instead I got a bland love story between an object and a handsome guy.
Two Stars and a toast to Audible's return policy.
Thanks for joining me on my first book review, I'll see you again soon!
