The Conductors

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC to review.

The Conductors has rather a lot going for it – a story of POC triumphing over the great evil that was the South in the Restoration era of American history. The general plot is about two underground railroad conductors solving a series of murders in their hometown. Oh, and there's magic.

However despite the extremely promising premise of the novel, I found this book to be lacking more than a few ways.

First off – the magic system is FRUSTRATINGLY vague. There is literally no explanation of how magic works. There's two different kinds of magic in The Conductors. Celestial and Sorcery. Celestial is only done by Black people, and Sorcery usually only done by white people. There is almost no explanation as to why. No explanation of what specific spells do, or how magic is controlled, or who has magic, etc. Celestial magic has the makings of a REALLY cool system...if we had more information. This is my biggest complaint of the book. We didn't need an info dump, or pages and pages on it, but some information sprinkled here and there would have done a WORLD of difference.

Secondly – The Conductors is supposedly in the adult novel category, but I found the writing to be more on edge with a YA or new adult novel. The writing is a little towards the simpler side, with very, very few descriptions of anything. I had no idea where the novel was set until I was already 40% of the way through the book. I would have love more descriptions on what the Philadelphia of this time period looked like. What did their boarding house look like? What was the weather like, how do the characters appreciate/hate their surroundings? It made the novel feel very bland.

Third – the relationship between Hattie and literally any of the characters was TOLD rather than shown until over halfway through the novel. Hattie calls several people her friends, and we see almost nothing to prove that true. Hattie is rather standoffish throughout the whole book. It makes her less than likeable as a character UNTIL we finally see her open up a bit. Her relationship with Benjy wasn't believable until (again) towards the end of the book.

The Conductors is a slow read – things happen but they happen in far apart beats. Nothing is seemingly urgent, there's no real page turning action in here. This could be a great book! It has the makings of one! There's just a lot missing. Two and half stars, rounded up.