Saturday, February 11, 2023

“The Tower’s Alchemist” by Alesha Escobar

I got this ebook for free somewhere, I don’t remember how. It’s… fine. For being free.

The book is about an English spy during World War II (WWII), the twist is that she’s a magician/alchemist and that’s just a normal part of the world. Having said that, I can’t figure out why this is part of WWII other than for the shock value to be honest. If you set your story during WWII you can then do horrible things to your characters and it’s not as questioned. Anyways the main character was trained at The Tower but then left to do the spy thing and make a difference or something. Also her dad was also trained there and he’s on the run from the alchemist authorities so she doesn’t see him very much.

I found a lot of the spy plot pretty confusing, there’s a bunch of “well that happened so now we have to go here” without a justification for WHY we are going there other than to advance the plot. So I won’t summarize that since it likely won’t be coherent anyways. There’s a whole subplot of her kinda sorta dating another spy who she then accuses of betraying her and then they break up. This leads to lots of pining for a normal life where she can be a heterosexual lady and date and have a family or whatever (which I can’t relate to being a non-heterosexual).

I’m being a downer on this book but this was an entertaining read, I think alternate histories can be fun. In terms of the writing though it sometimes gets bogged down in exchanges where the author throws in references to pop culture of the 40s and feels the need to explain it. Personally I think readers can either look it up or likely already know it.

This book is part of a series; I have no desire to read the others but this also wasn’t a bad time. I think the author just needs to figure out why she’s writing about this time period to shore up the plot a lot, there’s potential for better things here.

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