Customer Reviews

Trick of the Light (Trickster, Book 1)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Rob Thurman has some serious urban fantasy chops with the Caliban Leandros series, so when I saw Trick of the Light on the new books shelf I was on it. But unlike the majority of readers I found this one to be a bit disappointing. Throughout most of the book I felt like something just had not quite gelled with the main character -- she seemed to be missing some component that would bring her to life for me. Or I would settle for a component that helped suspend disbelief, pull me into her story. I really did not find either quality, and I found the tricky ending to be frustrating. I felt like I had been played in a way, reading through the book, plowing along to hopefully get to a great finish maybe, since the story felt so thin to me. It's hard to write a complete review without putting in a spoiler, but I don't want to be more specific as obviously plenty of other people enjoyed the story. So, I'll put it this way, if you do not care for deux ex machina type endings, this book may not be for you. And for those who might lean the other way and say what good is urban fantasy/mystery without some twists and turns? I say twists and turns occur through the plots and surprises, but it seems a bit unfair to reveal major changes to not just one, but three main characters, all within the final pages of the book. I really wanted to like this book, too. I still think Rob Thurman is a strong author in this genre, and I definitely will read the next book in the Cal Leandros series.

Felt like a good quote was needed for a subject header. Forgive me that one. :)

I agree with the majority of complaints and praise given by the other three star reviewers (in particular, Anthrophile's). Like everyone else, I decided to give TotL a try because of my absolute love for the Leandros series.

In a previous review I did (for Thurman's "Nightlife"), I mentioned that the Leandros books are golden if the voice of the narrator is one that you can enjoy. If not, well... Cal Leandros is a pretty strong character; you really get a sense of his personality and beliefs from even the most mundane of comments, so if you don't like his tone, the story might be a long haul for you.

The same holds true for our latest protagonist - Trixa. Her personality comes through in just about everything she says. Things are rarely spoken or described without a flavor of sarcasm, deceit, or a healthy boast of self-confidence. However, while I liked Cal's voice, I wasn't as fond of Trixa's. In the moments when she remarked about her faults (whether as a joke, or to give the readers a few flaws with which they could relate), it felt forced. When Cal makes those kind of remarks about himself, you know he means it. WIth Trixa, it felt hollow. Anyone read Meyers' stuff? Y'know how Bella always said she was pretty average, and yet all the world loved her? Sort of like that. It's hard to find merit in one's admitted "bad points" when the rest of the world isn't backing you up on them. In other words, to me, Trixa seemed too perfect.

BUT.. and this is a huge but, by the very end of the book (and I'm talking the last twenty pages or so), I understood her opinions and feelings a little more. If I were to read TotL a second time, I dont believe I'd feel as strongly about the above. Sorry - that sounds so vague, but I can't elaborate without spoiling things!

Last, Trixa can be repetitive. The evils of Heaven and Hell and the broken judgement of Zeke and the brightness of Eli's smile or smoothness of Solomon's voice.. some things were drilled into the pages. Yeah, yeah.. I know Cal does the same at times. But I like hearing what Cal has to say. Again, with Trixa, that wasn't always the case.

The ending was a bit of a deus ex machina. If this was a standalone book, it would have rubbed me the wrong way. Being part of a series, I didn't mind it as much (because I have hopes that the big shocking moment of the novel will be developed further along in the series).

...so, as you can see, I will continue reading.

I do lack a fondness for Trixa, but I didn't outright dislike her, either. Neither the characters or the story completely won me over, but I've enjoyed Ms. Thurman's other novels so much that I have faith that this series can make a turn for the better.

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All of that said, the one comment I hope people read, if any, from this review is the following:

If you are new to Ms. Thurman's books, I really, really, REALLY recommend that you try the Leandros series first. I most definitely wouldn't recommend Trick of the Light as a gateway to the Thurman urban-fantasy experience.

However, if you are already a fan of the Leandros series, then give Trick of the Light a try. It's not Ms. Thurman's best work, but it has a lot of her trademark wit, pretty people, plot twists, and unique takes on legendary creatures.

Others have provided synopses, so I won't rehash the story line here. I really liked Rob Thurman's Cal/Niko Leandros series, so I wanted to like this book as well. However, several things just didn't work for me:

The book is told in the first person (not necessarily bad), but the narrator, Trixa, is unrelentingly, annoyingly sarcastic. There were times when I wished I could reach into the book, shake her, and say "be serious for just *one* moment, please." I appreciate sarcasm, but all the time? It made her seem shallow, and I wasn't able to connect with her at all.

Griffin and Zeke seem like a gay, non-fraternal re-imagining of Cal and Niko - the younger one, with a dark past and trouble adjusting, who is cared for by the older, handsome, competent one. This set-up didn't feel very...original.

The big surprise at the end, for the reader, is something that Trixa already knows - and has known all along. We've been in her head this whole time, and not once did she think about anything relating to the big surprise even though it was relevant to the story. As a reader, I feel deceived by Trixa, which only adds to my not liking her.

I don't know if there is going to be another book in this series, but I won't be reading it if Trixa remains as the narrator. I am looking forward to ROADKILL, the next in the Cal/Niko series.

Like so many others, I love Thurman's Cal Leandros series so I immediately ordered Trick of the Light. I wanted to see how she handles a female protagonist. Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed with Trixa. Honestly, I didn't like her. She seemed to be trying way too hard to be a bad a@@, and I had trouble getting invested in the revenge storyline. Cal was more sympathetic and outright interesting because he was an unwilling party to the hidden supernatural world, and he had a history and family that made him relatable. Secondary characters were given sufficient development. Readers don't know much about Trixa other than she loves red, she owns a bar and her brother was murdered by a demon. Trixa's main partner, Leo, says very little and is a complete mystery until the end, and Zeke and Griffin are one dimensional. Despite the implied quest of searching for the "Light of Life," there wasn't much going on in the book except for Trixa's numerous pissing contests with demons that should've been able to crush her like a bug. And the villains were cardboard cutouts.

The conclusion did have a couple big twists/surprises that I didn't anticipate - mainly because, as another reviewer pointed out, it was deux ex machina. None of these are uncommon issues in urban fantasy, and that may be why this was disappointing. Nightlife (Cal Leandros, Book 1) was very original, Trick of the Light felt like something I have read before.

However, there were some very good things going for the book. I loved how Thurman wove the story into the universe she already created with Cal Leandros. Trixa fights demons in Vegas, and the explanation for why we haven't seen them in NY is clever. Robin Goodfellow makes a cameo (with the potential for more in the future), we find out what Ishiah is (albeit indirectly) and the battle between "above and below" is unique in how it is executed within an urban fantasy setting. And though the ending was a bit of a cheat, I enjoyed the surprise anyway. I finally felt some enthusiasm for the characters. And with this improved understanding of who Trixa is, I think the next book has a better starting place to pull readers into her world.

Overall, this wasn't nearly as good as her other series, but I will read the next book before giving up on it. The author took a gamble by not giving Trixa more substance in order to make her more mysterious. I don't think it worked, but it also shouldn't be an issue for the next book. Thurman is an excellent writer.

Some authors can write characters of both genders. Some can only convincingly write characters of their own gender. And some can only write the opposite one.

Unfortunately Rob Thurman seems to be one of those women who can only write convincing male protagonists, because her first attempt at a female protagonist falls as flat as a dehydrated jellyfish. The first Trickster book "Trick of the Light" has a promising premise and some fascinating supporting characters, but it's riddled with confusing action scenes and a snotty Mary Sue of a heroine.

Trixa Iktomi (wow, a Lakota trickster as a surname... subtle) runs a bar during the day, and hunts demons every night -- one of them murdered her brother, and so she's obviously hunting for the guy whodunnit. What's more, she's searching for the Light of Life which she can trade to Hell for her brother's killer. So when she isn't running her business, she firebombs demon hideouts with her pals Griffin and Zeke.

However, agents of both Heaven and Hell want the Light of Life, and Eden House (a sort of organization run by angels... its influence is never very well defined) is out for it -- as is Solomon, a sexy bad-boy demon who wants in Trixa's pants (of course).

"Trick of the Light" = awesome demon-hunters + typical Snappy Sue heroine + half-baked plot + Judeo-Christian mythos without any belief or pesky God involvement. Honestly, it feels like Rob Thurman had a well-thought-out cast of male characters and a half-formed urban fantasy mythos... and then for some reason, she jammed a Mary-Sueish protagonist firmly in the middle of it all.

The biggest problem is, of course, Trixa -- she's an Action Mary Sue. She's gorgeous, tough, has tri-colored hair (black, bronze AND red), a bunch of phallic weapons, rebellious, has an idiotically inappropriate wardrobe (she boasts about going demon-killing in high heels and a brocaded silk blouse), and she's basically a huge pain-in-the-butt poser. Oh, and she loves blowing things up, presumably because it makes her look cool.

Worst of all, she has a case of "Anita Blake Angst," in which a person who has suffered a single personal tragedy claims to have become Dark, Tough and Oh-So-Cynical because of it -- while surrounded by characters who have had it worse. The worst part is, the supporting cast is actually fascinating -- characters like Zeke, Griffin and Solomon are far more fascinating, tragic and layered than Trixa, but they're all sort of half-fleshed-out.

And since the book is in first-person, we're pretty much stuck with Trixa's inner self-indulgent sarcasm and leaden witticisms ("Who knew laziness would trigger the Apocalypse?"). Thurman's plot is also pretty thin -- we get long stretches of Trixa not doing much at all, punctuated by confusing action scenes, whining about how much Trixa hates Above and everyone connected to it, and long rambling conversations.

"Trick of the Light" has some flickers of promise and some fascinating supporting cast, but the underbaked plot and detestable Mary Sue just tear the bottom out of it.

I am a huge fan of the Cal/Neko series, so I was thrilled when Rob Thurman released another book. However, the only part of this new storyline that I even remotely appreciated was the brief appearance of Robin Goodfellow (from the Cal Leanros series, if you have yet to read them). The way she twisted the two worlds together was interesting... but the rest of the storyline left something to be desired. I felt very little connection to any of the characters, despite the fact that she shoved Zeke's quirky-but-lovable antisocial behavioral issues down my throat for the majority of the meager character development that was present.

The series of events was a boring repetition of one "badass" character showing up uninvited only to be interrupted by another, then they banter, then they part. If it wasn't Eli and Solomon, it was one of the demons and one of the angels. Or Trinity and a demon. Or Trinity a demon and an angel. Etc. Although interesting at first, it became very boring, very fast. It feels like she was ploughing through a vague and uninteresting storyline just to reveal the "big twist" at the end. The story felt like a Scoobie-doo mystery up until the "big surprise ending". However, (without giving anything away) two thirds of the "twist" are useless. She doesn't tie it into the storyline or climax at all- she just uses it for the sake of irony. On top of it all I found that her usual gritty narrative wit became a bit corny, some innuendos were downright confusing. Not to mention that some of the writing was poorly put together and I was confused at a particular instance or two.

I am disappointed, but will still pick up the next book in the Cal Leandros series (Roadkill- coming March 2010).

First I want to start this off with the fact that this Author is notorious for bribing her readers with promises of free books and such goodies in exchange for putting up reviews of her book.
So keep that in mind while reading other reviews on here!
Questionable actions aside this books is a horrible step backwards from her other series.
The main character reads like a mary-sue, too perfect and over powered. Her wit lacks any actual humor and the plot is over worked and unimaginative. Despite being female anytime she writes females, they fail to hold and sort of interest or come of as realistic in any sort of way. Which is ironic seeing as her males are the exact opposite.
It's clear from reading it that she actually would have preferred to write more about the side characters then the lead! More time is spent investigating and over explaining them!
Do yourself a favor, read her Cal/Niko series but shy away from this one.

Lately, I do a lot of my reading while working out. A good book gets me through an hour of cardio without it being a chore, a great book has me doing extra laps, continuing the read elsewhere and/or actually looking *forward* to the next workout session, a bad book has me pausing the workout and finding something else. For 'Trick of the Light', the time went by rather fast, but the book never made it away from the bike, not even when I got down to the last part.

I've read Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros series, and after hanging in tough with the first book, I've enjoyed the rest and even recommended them to friends. It's not a perfect series, but a good, entertaining read with characters I care about and like. The author does have an enjoyable talent for melding darkness with humor, as well as her interesting takes on mythology.

As some readers have commented, the main character in this new series, Trixia, can be a bit much to take. There were times she came across as a much too over-confident Cal to me, and I think one of the problems I have with this book is it does seem to copy a bit too much from the Leandros series. There are a lot of similar themes going on. Also, I personally found it an irritant that this series and that one are in the same world. The way the author went about handling that fact just seemed too rough to me, almost as if she had two separate ideas and did her best to make them fit into the same universe by name dropping. I got annoyed every time she mentioned a certain character - perhaps it's just me, but I think she could have done a much better, *smoother* job of showing how Trixia and Cal's worlds are the same.

Again, as it's been commented, there's a 'trick' revealed at the end that I can't go into much detail about without spoiling the plot, and it's another thing that comes across as flawed to me, as needing a bit more work to make a smoother transition into the plot. I wasn't too surprised, in part because things didn't really add up through the book and I wish that the author would have taken the time, just a small bit of effort to smooth out things rather than just go 'tada!'. Sometimes it felt as if the book (and author) was trying too much to be clever. I don't know how much I was supposed to pick up or how much is from me being very familiar with a lot of mythology.

The book has some flaws. That said, it also had moments that made me laugh, and I really enjoyed characters such as Leo and Zeke. There are some very interesting premises in the book, and, unless the author does something to completely put me off of her before then, I'll look forward to buying the next book in the series to see if she can improve things from the first book as she did in her previous series.

I believe I'm going to be the odd man out here and say that I gave this two stars only because I think she's a good writer --- love the Cal Leandros series (thought Rob was a man the whole time I read that and only recently realized he's a she.) That said, I didn't like this one at all and the best thing about it (now that I've read the story) was the clever title.

The writing is good, the storyline was fine, but somehow it just didn't work for me. I never really got interested in the characters or cared what happened to them. Didn't even care about what happened at the ending when it finally unfolded and was just glad it was done. I'm not sure what made Cal and Co. so interesting while these remained flat - perhaps it was that everyone had a vague past and I never really felt like I connected with the characters and knew what made them tick till the very end and by then it was too late?

I would still buy future books, tho, and am looking forward to them.

Trixa is a bar owner in Vegas. When first we meet her she's just burned down a nightclub with her two companions, Griffin and Zeke, who she took in years earlier when they were just a couple of starving teens on the street. The arson's okay, though, because the club is owned by a demon and burning down his rebuilt clubs is sort of a favorite pastime of the trio.

There's also Trixa's bff, Leo, a sexy Native-American who runs the bar with her and has known her and her family for ages. He and Trixa bond most tightly where her late brother is concerned. The three of them were close and, you guessed it, a demon killed Kimano while he slept. Not cool. And the reason for the vengeance Trixa seeks that also drives the story.

That's all I'll say about that.

Despite a few problems, I really liked this story. I had a hard time putting it down. Thurman doesn't write romances, although she has a serious addiction to writing hot male characters and romance almost always has a thread. She would probably expand her audience if she added a few sex scenes, but that's not how she rolls, and that's okay because she's all about the other kind of action -- guns, knives, monsters, battles, fire ... etc ... and there is plenty of that to go around in this story.

The narrative has a very twisty nature to it. There are many things hidden throughout the story and many of them are revealed by the end. Setups can be subtle so close attention to detail is recommended. A variety of emotions are triggered by the characters and what happens/has happened to them and that's typical of Thurman's writing. That's why I like her.

My complaints have to do with the end. I won't be too specific because there are major spoilers I don't want to give out, but my problem is that certain things could have been better presented and almost seemed like a rip-off when the reveal finally came. The climax of the story is quite good, very exciting, but it's followed by about three chapters of wordy wrap-up that could have been achieved in one chapter of 'showing' rather than 'telling', IMO.

But, this complaint aside, I will definitely buy the next book in this second series by Rob Thurman.