The Midnight Front

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I am a pretty easy grader. If I enjoy something, if I can lose myself in it for the period I'm reading it, if it induces me to think about the setting or characters, then I am a soft touch for a “five-star” rating.

This book met those criteria. It was a page-turner that took us from setting up through conflicts to resolution and planted the seeds of a second story without leaving us hanging.

The storyline introduces Cade Martin on the eve of World War II. Cade is an American at Oxford, returning to the US with his parents to avoid the war. Their ship - the Athena - is sunk and his parents are killed by a Kraken. The next thing we know is Cade is recruited into a super-secret fraternity of sorcerers. In author David Mack's universe, all “magick” is performed by “yoking” demons. The demons perform because of rituals that involve mortgaging the soul of the adept (“Karcist”) for future damnation.

Naturally, Cade is the “chosen one” and masters the system quickly, which is good because World War II is clicking along and the Nazis have their own Karcists working for them. The ending of the book resolves itself through missions involving Point du Hoc and the Firebombing of Dresden.

The characters are fairly two dimensional with simple motivation. The magic system seems like it would make a good card game where players would select no more than ten demons to yoke and battle each other, e.g., The flaming scimitars of BARTISON against the invisible cloak of GORGONEX. (Honestly, this got tedious and laughable at some points, but I could see the attraction for the YA readers.)

A nit I had to pick was the “cosmological reveal” where we find out that humans don't get to go to Heaven or Hell. This seemed to take away the existential conundrum of trafficking with demons. I felt that this was almost a requirement for modern urban fantasy, i.e., obviously, no one believes in that religion nonsense in a world where there are actual demons. Disappointing, actually.

The end of the book leaves us with the burgeoning Cold War as the Allies and Soviet Union seem to be cooking up their own demon-yoking systems to go along with their nuclear weapons.

I don't know if I will read the sequel. That may be in the distant future, but I did enjoy this book

History x Magic.

Ok, so this has so called demons/devils in it, and it happened to one of my favorite period in human history, World War 2...................that is why I forgot all my previous books to do read this(sadly as I was so excited I forgot to put this one on this site, you might think I finished this in one seating unfortunately no it was two weeks worth of seating).

First Chapter, I was ok this is it, mood setting, rather dark and you can feel the panic people must have felt when Nazi Germany attacked, as the story continued, I felt the pacing a bit slow, but of course since we are dealing with the start of WWII, maybe it was just like that, after a few chapters, my exuberance faded, I was a bit disappointed, not only was demonology an uminportant part of the big picture but it was used in the shadows, this book felt like what spies would be doing if they had the ability to call up demons(term here was yoking), and yes it was like that we have a group of good demonologists going after their opposites, as usual the protagonists are on the losing side, historically the whole of Europe was on the losing side then specially from 1940-1941, and so the story continued, 1942 came and Europe was starting to fight back, still the German flattened all oppositions, on the magickal side the protagonists are losing their members one by one...........

Reading the succeeding chapters, we never saw our heroes triumph on a large scale, everything felt like a minor irritation, If I were the opposing karcist(oh yes demon yoking magic users are called by this appelation)I would have also laughed, the only redeeming part was 1945, or D-DAY, this is real action here no magic, no nothing, just simple human will to succeed against a dangerous ideal and a truly horrible person, by this time I was just reading along, trying to finish this one, why??? Well no more magic, demons were......well you will know, if you read the novel.

Much as I hate to stop reading this, I guess the concept of the whole thing still excites me plus there is a sequel(please Mr. Mack make this a real breath taker) and a sample chapter, as of now I am still hoping!!!