Book Review: TRICKSTER by Jeff Somers

Lem is a Trickster, scamming his way through life, using his magical abilities to survive. But in Lem’s sub-culture, magic costs, and the payment is blood. Most of Lem’s ilk, mages, use other people’s blood–“bleeders” they call them. Lem’s conscience won’t allow him to do that, so he is constantly cutting himself for the power to play small mind tricks, or to make dollar bills appear to be twenties. Other mages have an entourage of bleeders, and are willing to kill to perform more complex magic. As you might expect, the most powerful magic requires the most blood. And when Lem and his best friend Mags stumble upon a girl in a car trunk, he realizes from the invisible rune tattoos covering her that someone is up to something big. A mage of great ability is planning the spell of her dreams, one that will require the blood of millions…

Ideas are commonplace; everyone has them. How many times have you heard someone say, “That would be a good idea for a book”? Scan the shelves of Barnes & Noble. Each one of those books started life as an idea. For each one, there are countless ideas that never grew beyond a thought. I daresay a lot of those unborn ideas would have made marvelous stories. But ideas alone don’t make good stories. What makes a good novel is a good idea well executed. The idea of using blood to perform magic is clever. It’s both limiting (characters with unlimited power can become boring very quickly), and creates potential drama. It also sets up the premise for a thrilling novel: What if a mage is prepared to commit mass murder on a horrendous scale just to serve her own needs? Thankfully, this idea is in good hands with Jeff Somers.

To begin with, Jeff doesn’t bog the reader down with backstory, or info dump on magic and the mage society. He throws us straight into the action with Lem and Mags, and slowly explains the world through them. The summary I gave above is based on a few chapters worth of story. In the hands of a lesser writer, the reader might be easily confused, having no idea what’s happening. But Jeff manages to engage us with the story, and feed us what we need to know along the way.

The story itself is also well developed. We start with the discovery of a girl in a bathtub, and then to the girl in the trunk. Lem and Mags  find themselves sucked into a situation they would rather not be a part of, with mages way beyond their league. But as every other avenue of help is torn from them, they soon realize it’s up to them to step up and do something, or the consequences will be too devastating to contemplate. Jeff stacks the odds firmly against our young mages, which is good for page-turning drama.

Jeff’s characters are far from black-and-white. Lem has a moral code that won’t allow him to “bleed” anyone but himself. This helps him sleep at night, but he has no qualms about using magic to manipulate and steal from people. Mags is Lem’s best friend. He’s a big guy, well-built, and will use his strength to protect Lem, which is good because his magical skills are fairly rudimentary. The rest of Lem’s world is one where you have to watch your back, even with people you think you know, which is where having a loyal friend like Mags is a rare blessing.

The one drawback to the book for me was the use of profanity. There’s a lot of it, which is not something that appeals to me. But that’s a taste issue. People who don’t mind (or who might even enjoy) a lot of f-words in their stories will enjoy this novel even more than I did–and I enjoyed it a lot. I don’t recall many, if any, sexual references. I would give it an R for the language, though, as I said, people who have less of an issue with that may drop the rating to a PG-15. Definitely a solid four GoodReads stars. I would especially recommend TRICKSTER to those who like urban fantasy.

UPDATE: Jeff informed me via Twitter that TRICKSTER is now Part 1 of the book WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE. Part 2 of the book continues the story. Also, be sure to check out Jeff’s website and blog, and sign up for his newsletter by going HERE.