Among the Living by Jordan Castillo Price

4 STARS

Psycop - Book 1

I had heard many good things about JCP's PsyCop series, so I was really hoping I'd like it after the disappointment that was Magic Mansion. Luckily, I really, really enjoyed it! It was a good, fun read.

I'm not a huge fan of paranormals, but I do love a good cop story and this was a good cop story. The world-building is good and it works. Police detective psychics partnered up with non-psychics or "stiffs" is a simple premise but can give rise to all kinds of wonderful situations.

This book is written in a 1st person POV, that of one of the PsyCops, Victor Bayne and his voice is very real. He's not a hero type, just a cop that wants to do his job and not bring undue attention onto himself. I liked him. I liked his quirks and flaws and uncertainties. And I liked his humour and his caring and his honesty. For me, he's an easy guy to want to follow through his adventures.

The secondary characters, Jacob, Lisa, Warwick, Carol... they're all separate and distinct and while they are the types you see in a lot of detective type books, they are also original and interesting. I really liked Lisa and hope to see more of her in further books.

This was a novella and was over far too soon - but the story had been told and well told, so I shouldn't complain. The mystery made sense, the clues where there and the characters discovered things at the times they should have been discovered. There was no heroic flash of brilliance, no obvious deus ex machina, the characters solved the case when they should have.

I will definitely be reading more of this series.

Magic Mansion by Jordan Castillo Price

3 STARS

In all the M/M reading I've done over the past couple of years, Jordan Castillo Price was always an author that was recommended to me but I never had the chance to follow up on those recs. One day I had a thought strike me that I had never read a romance about magicians and I thought that would be an interesting occupation for a main character and indeed a fascinating world to explore. I mentioned this on Twitter and someone came back with a rec for Magic Mansion with the added bonus that the main characters weren't twenty-somethings or younger. Having always wanted to try JCP, I picked it up.

Magic Mansion was originally written as a serial and unfortunately it shows when reading it as a novel. Also, the fact that it's about a weekly reality TV contest show only added to the weird up and down reading experience I had. It felt as if I was driving on a hilly road or one of those baby rollercoasters with the gentle rise and fall motion. I think this way of writing the story hindered the development of the relationship between John and Ricardo, the two main magicians. At least that's how it felt to me.

There was just so much about how this TV show was being produced and the details of the competitions; so much behind the scenes stuff when I would rather have been focussed on John and Ricardo. I didn't feel as if I got to see their relationship grow and progress from that initial 'coup de foudre' meeting at the auditions. Instead I felt as if we were being given relationship markers along the way. The pair is at this point of their relationship now here... and then at this point here. And it's a shame because I really, really liked both of them! I wanted way more about them and way less about the BTS shenanigans of the TV show. I find myself wondering how much of this lack was because of the way the story was originally published.

There was also the interesting "True Magic" angle. Some magicians have it, others don't. They can sense it in each other... or is it only some of them that can. I don't know what it is really, I wanted to know more about it and how it formed and affected those magicians that possessed the power. And is that the same thing as the "Truth" reading that John seems to be able to do? I don't know... it seemed to be more important to describe each set, each competition down to the last screw and nail than to explore the truly magical side of things. When I first started the book, a couple of chapters in and the "True Magic" was mentioned, I got all excited because I hadn't been expecting anything like this... then sadly... it became a minor thing, hauled out as a deux ex machina I felt.

Don't get me wrong, the tale was enjoyable, the MCs interesting, the supporting players were fun but the whole thing just ... left me feeling a little disappointed, a little flat, a little let down. I will most definitely read JCP again - I have the first PsyCop in my TBR and that's gotten A LOT of praise from people whose opinions I trust. It's just that I felt this book could have been a helluva lot more.