Book Review: "Modern Magick" by R. J. Johnson

 

Witches, warlocks, and magic spells. They were only stories. Until now.

Everything people think they know about magic is wrong.

Reporter John Jupiter is no stranger to strange news. But when news about the murder of reclusive billionaire Alan Knickerbocker falls in his lap, the story of a lifetime drastically changes his life.

After a mysterious amulet gives John the ability to cast magic spells, it’s up to him and a handful of brilliant misfits to stop a team of mercenaries known as the Triumvirate, who are determined to release an ancient threat and use it to bend humanity to their will.

No one else will believe them. No one else knows. Magic is real… - from Booksirens.com

I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.

This is the first book in a new series by this author, called 'The Omnichron Chronicles'. The plot description was enough to get my attention, and being a series, I decided to try it. The basic storyline is of a honest news reporter gets a lead on the death of a very rich man, discovers an amulet with an odd saying inscribed on it that once read, gives out 'magical power' to the people around the amulet. As this discovery is going on, and he surrounds himself with a rag-tag team of misfits, they discover there are some baddies that have some magic as well. Needless to say, good guys want to stop the bad guys, who just want to control the world, and unleash a power into our realm that could destroy it.

Okay, sounds great. Except it wasn't. It was just ... okay. There is no major background story on any of the characters. All you learn about them is the very basics. MC is a news reporter that considers himself with integrity and honesty - but we don't know why. Don't know anything about how he got to where he is, etc. And each character is like that. Even the baddies we know not why they are bad. Just that they have done "jobs" and it has always been the three of them. Though, I guess you could say we know they are baddies because they tend to hurt people. 

Of course, there are group dynamics going on. In our group of good people, there is some romantic interests between four of them (two and two, not four on four) that doesn't really seem to go much of anywhere. It is written defintely with YA crowd in mind as it is so basic. There was not much said in regards to the magic. It seemed anyone with it had similar powers, but each had a somewhat individual strength in some area. Practicing the magic seemed to make you stronger in its use, but potions had to be taken to quickly "re-up" the mana. It was never really said where the magic came from (this world, that world, etc) only that it had been taken out of our world to stop a major event several hundred years prior.

Overall I was let-down about how this story turned out. I felt at minimum it is a YA read (which I usually do not care for). I think the character backgrounds could be a bit more detailed, otherwise I felt like I was reading a comic strip, knowing the characters only as how they look. World building was okay. Off the top of my head I don't remember what city this was taking place in, could have been NYC, but it also could have been any larger city. Nothing in particular stood out in my memory as to distinguish major landmarks. I think most of it didn't matter unless it was partial to the story. Well, practice makes perfect, and I would consider reading the next book in the series to see if the author's writing style has gotten better in fleshing out details and maybe more background.