Jordan L Hawk, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-941230-33-6
Historical Romantic Suspense, 2018
It’s the early 1900s in Jordan L Hawk’s The Magician’s Angel, and the magician in question is Christopher Fiend. Luckily, that is just his stage name. Anyway, he’s a star attraction in the Iowan Chateau Theater, as part of a vaudeville show with dancers, actors, and more.
It sounds fun, unless you’re Edward Smith, one of the two brothers that inherit the place from their father. The theater is bleeding money and Edward thinks that they should just shut down the whole thing.
The other brother, Tobias, is more optimistic about turning things around soon… somehow… but our hero, as the accountant of family, knows that math is math, and math is real, while feels are just frivolous stuff that can lead one to financial ruination. See: his father.
Then someone shows up dead, and Edward finds himself joining Christopher to look into the matter.
Well, let’s start with the nice things, shall we?
This one is easy to read, the conversations flow smoothly and naturally, and Christopher cracks one-liners here and there but doesn’t overdo it to the point of making everything a Joss Whedon-wannabe try hard farce.
The mystery part of the story is interesting and pretty well crafted, and it certainly doesn’t feel like some filler to pad the pages before and after the boinking. The romance can be on the under-baked side, but I’d take that over two people unrealistically going all horn dogs with one another when they are supposed to be investigating a murder.
Also, the characters are fine, although they are quite stereotypical in that the chatty, more flamboyant one is the bottom while the stoic, more tsundere type is the top. The relationship unfurls like a typical one that involve such stereotypes. Perhaps that is the point, as romance likes its formula a lot, and I have to admit that, no matter how many times I’ve come across these characters before under different names and occupations, Edward and Christopher are pleasant and likable leads.
My main issue—yes, let’s get to the not-so-nice things now—is that this story feels like it has started out being meant to be a longer story, but was cut shorter in the end for some reason. There’s nothing wrong with this under normal circumstances, but here it also means that the whole Iowan Chateau Theater making a loss subplot—which seems important at first because it’s brought up as the main reason why Edward has a grumpy face all the time as well as why he has some daddy issues—eventually just fades to the background to make way for the murder mystery.
In the end, all is well with the whole place just because we need a happy ending. That’s unsatisfying, especially when this whole subplot could have easily been removed altogether without significantly altering the story. I mean, we could easily have Edward not keen on managing the vaudeville because he’s afraid of clowns or something, and he eventually overcomes his fears by making the clowns do their thing in sexy outfits instead.
Also, this story has some slight paranormal element, mostly to tie it with other related stories that feature an ornament of an angel that help people find romance and what not. I feel that this angle is more distracting than anything else, especially when it makes the happy ending feel somewhat like the result of a deus ex machina, or ornament ex machina in this case, than genuine evolution of the main characters’ feelings.
Still, these issues are pretty minor in that they don’t really get in the way of me liking this story in the end.
This is an alright story, oh yes. I won’t say that it knocks me over or takes my breath away, but it provides a pleasant diversion on a lazy afternoon. Hence, I’d say this one ranks on the higher end of the three-oogie scale.
