Book Review: "The Devil Pulls The Strings" by J. W. Zarek

THE DEVIL PULLS THE STRINGS, described as The Librarians meet The Magicians is a 76,000-word epic fantasy adventure with series potential, set in modern-day Wentzville, MO, New York City, and 1813 Genoa, Italy, weaves bromance, Slavic mythology, secret societies, Paganini’s music and time travel.

Boone Daniels (22) has problems, debilitating panic attack, gut-wrenching guilt, a wendigo haunting him since age six, and now he almost killed his best friend in a joust. But when he fills in for his injured friend at a New York gig, he goes to meet the gig’s contact at his NYC brownstone and a body falls from the brownstone balcony and the place explodes with gun fire.

Boone barely escapes but uncovers a sinister plot to perform a rare Paganini piece that summons the Devil to trap Baba Yaga and destroy modern-day New York City. Then finds himself on a race through time to capture the cursed melody.

Along the way, a Romani immortal, steampunk vampires and Baba Yaga set the stage for war, and Boone shall have to risk death for redemption. Because all Boone wants is to keep a promise to a friend. The same friend, he almost killed last Sunday during a joust.

Can a small-town Missouri musician outplay the supernatural and save NYC’s soul?

The Devil Pulls the Strings is the pulse-pounding first tale in the Archivists series.

If you like when tortured heroes, epic battles, time travel, twisted history and secret societies collide, then you’ll love J. W. Zarek’s spectacular page-turner. - from Goodreads

Thanks to Booksirens and the publisher for allowing me to read this book and provide my opinion. 

*** Possible spoilers ahead ***

I'm not going to go into an accounting of the storyline here, but just jump into how I felt about the book. The story description pulled at me (see what I did there?) but left me feeling somewhat doubtful about what I was going to be reading. I was not let down by my suspicions. The story started off well, and before you know it, we find the main character rushed off to a New York City, placed in danger, constantly on the run, with hardly any idea what he is doing ... except to fill in at a gig for a band. From there, 'time displacements' and 'magical' things' happening do not surprise the main character, and everything is taken in stride like it is near normal day occurrences. There was not much background or character development. It was like, there's this guy that suddenly has to do this thing, and this thing happened, then that... with no explanation as to what this organization is, why are they better than that one, which is truly the right side to be on, or is there a right side?

I want to rant and rave about how much I didn't like this story, but I actually liked it. The storyline is a good one, and I like the mixture of 'magic cultures' (bards/druids, slavic Baba Yaga) and a classical composer that has always had stories of being involved in a pact with the Devil. The book itself was not a long read for me - finished in an afternoon. In the description above, I see it is a first in a series, which I will keep an eye for the next story, just to see what the author can come up with. I want desperately to give this a four star, but the lack of background of what is going on, who the character is and develops through the story, and just some 'out of the blue' who are these guys (the taxi drivers) events just make it so much harder for me to grasp what kind of place the author is writing about.