Book Review: Time-Marked Warlock, by Shami Stovall

A Wizard PI that isn't a knockoff.

The genre of wizard PIs is surprisingly empty. When one considers some of the bigger names in the Urban Fantasy genre are private investigators like Harry Dresden and Paxton Locke, or private companies like Monster Hunter International, and the occasional public servants like Thomas Nolan. Offhand, I can only think of one other Urban Fantasy PI, and he’s a werewolf.

Meet Adair Finch. And he’s about to have one of the longest days of his life. To the point where Jack Bauer would just shrug and give up.

The Story

Adair Finch wakes up at 4:34 am and marks the time. A loud pounding on his door wakes him. A child named Bree Blackstone is there, seeking his help; her mother Vera is an old friend of Finch, and she’s been murdered, and Bree’s father Liam has been kidnapped. Finch has been out of the PI business for nearly a decade, but Bree just needs someone to ask some questions. And it’s LA, are we really going to trust the police?

Everything is going well until a sniper kills a witness, and Bree…

Then Adair Finch wakes up at 4:34 am, collects Bree from the front door, and the day starts again. In this world, Warlocks make deals with spirits and “gods” and other creatures. Finch has made a deal with Chronos. When he marks the time, he can reset an entire day with everything he knows, and start fresh.

There is a reason the blurb describes this as The Dresden Files meets Groundhog Day. Though there are more moments that feel like Benedict Cumberbatch is about to say, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

For a case that Finch didn’t even want to join, it becomes more and more of a rabbit hole each time. A murder and missing person case turns into a story of gang warfare, corruption, a conspiracy, drug dealers, and enough dead cats to run a Chinese food restaurant for months.

Shami Stovall’s writing style is nice and efficient, using enough details to paint a picture, but not enough to bog us down in the prose.

Overall, the pacing is nice and even. Like Edge of Tomorrow, there isn’t a lot of tension except for certain points where there is a genuine concern that our main characters might die. Mostly it’s just a mystery, unraveling bits and pieces, sorting out what are the real crimes from just ominous red herrings, the true criminals from the hired help.

All in all, it is a fun, unique little murder mystery.

The Characters

While the blurbs for Time-Marked Warlock like to compare it to The Dresden Files meets Groundhog Day, there are better comparisons. Adair Finch is not Harry Dresden—there is no first person snarky narration. He has more similarity to Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: he’s anti-social, a bit of a shut-in, with a dead brother, who’s death is still an unsolved mystery. He is short-tempered, has no tolerance to stupidity, and he’s not filled with quirky one-liners. (For the record, no, this does not end up with Judge Doom having killed his brother. That would wreck what I presume is the series arc.) He prefers indirect ways of dealing with problems. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Oh, and Finch’s secondary weapon (aside from time manipulation) is fire.

So of course, he’s teamed up with a perky, outgoing preteen girl.

Bree is a weird little girl. She’s manic. She’s vengeful. She’s squeamish. She’s up. She’s down. She’s Left. She’s Right. B. A. Start. I know she’s supposed to be a prepubescent female, but I personally know people with multiple personalities who are more consistent than this girl. The only constant in her personality is that she’s the child who always asks “Why?” Overall, Bree is the biggest achievement of Stovall’s novel: avoiding the feeling that this is just one long, drawn-out escort mission, and all of the usual drawbacks thereof. I didn’t want Bree to get killed at any point, making that a major achievement.

Kull: a trickster spirit who was only supposed to fill a quick need in the plot, and ends up tagging along. She gets most of the one-liners in the novel. (“Can you tell what [idiot warlock] has bonded with?” Kull: “Marijuana.”)

The World

This is more of the “secret world” genre of urban fantasy. Those in authority know about the supernatural, but few others. Reasons for that have not been spelled out here, except in cases where the supernatural folk just like to keep to themselves. (Like Finch, for one.) It’s clear that the police need to hire warlocks and witches to catch supernatural criminals, and that becomes its own problem in the novel.

Shami Stovall has a very well laid out magic system, with preciously described rules and regulations. Warlocks gain magic one way (by making deals with certain supernatural entities), witches gain power in different ways (depending on the phase of the moon).

One of the nice things about the world is that the supernatural beings that come up are well-defined. Spirits are just things that are born of nature, demons are not to be messed with, and making deals with angels will just get you into a war with Hell. Things like that.

Politics

None. Not applicable. If you see politics here, seek help.

Content Warning

Dead cats. So many dead cats. Though none are actively killed on the page.

There is limited language abuse. As Bree notes, she has the internet, so the language isn’t strictly PG-13.

Who is it for?

Any fan of urban fantasy will enjoy this. It’s certainly better than anything in the Iron Druid series.

Normally, this section is all about “If you like the X-premise of Y-series, you’ll love this book.” But what sells Time-Marked Warlock is the originality of the premise. It isn’t the Dresden Files. Nor is it really Groundhog Day. It’s something unique.

Were I to rank it, it would probably make the top six urban fantasy series I’ve read—John Ringo’s Special Circumstances, Jim butcher’s The Dresden Files, Daniel Humphreys’ Paxton Locke, Monster Hunter International, Saint Tommy NYPD, and then Madam Stovall’s work.

(I would add Michael Gallagher’s Body and Blood, but one book is not a series. And NR LaPoint is more fantasy than Urban.)

Why buy it?

While I wouldn’t put it on the list of THE BEST URBAN FANTASY EVER, I certainly enjoyed it. If you like a sold, character- and mystery-driven novel, you should probably have already bought Time-Marked Warlock.