This is a fantasy novel set in Cincinnati, which I read as part of my project to read books set in my hometown. It's about a young person who, when their dad passes away, discovers that instead of having a boring corporate job, their dad was actually a wizard—and in order to find out why their dad died, they join the same wizarding firm.
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Published: 2018 Acquired: December 2023 Read: July 2024 |
As a book, it is most assuredly okay. The book is self-published, and in need of a good editor in two different ways. The book has a fun premise, and Swicegood does a good job of merging wizardry with humdrum corporate life. At first I was suspicious of the book's seemingly sub-Pratchett footnotes, but I soon came to look forward to the funny and situationally appropriate excerpts from the employee handbook. The world Swicegood builds up is interesting; the three principal characters are fun. The climax is clever, one of those ones that uses previously set up rules of the magic world to good advantage. My favorite joke in the whole book is one that plays with perspective very well, when you are following a group of dark wizards in a meeting but then find out where they actually are.
But I found that the main character, Andy, often made decisions for reasons that needed to be spelled out more; in particular, their joining the wizarding firm seemed pretty arbitrary. The investigation of the conspiracy was pretty sloppily done. Basically, Andy bumbled along for over a hundred pages, not really learning anything, and then a minor character comes to him, conveniently tells him everything that's going on, and promptly vanishes from the narrative. I found Andy's relationship to their dead father pretty unclear; mostly it seemed like they hadn't really known their father, but every now and then there'd be a reference that indicated otherwise, like it was a relic from an earlier draft or something. I think a good developmental editor could have pushed Swicegood to do a strong revision that would have brought all this out more.
It also desperately needed a copyeditor. Lots of bad punctuation, missing words, poor formatting. I can't remember the last book I read that had so many typographical errors.
I read these books for the local color; Wizards on Walnut Street has more than some but less than others. There are a couple good jokes about Cincinnati chili, some of which I hadn't seen before. But if Swicegood really wanted to sell that Andy was an awkward out-of-towner in Cincinnati, he should have had all the other characters constantly asking them where they went to high school!
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