Book review: Chronos Warlock, by Shami Stovall
Urban Fantasy with a Dashiell Hammett complexity to the plot.
Time-Marked Warlock, the first novel starring Adair Finch, was an entertaining murder mystery within the surprisingly small wizard-PI genre. (Seriously, you’d think there would be more copy-cats of Dresden out there, if nothing else.)
The follow-up, Chronos Warlock, is an interesting variation on what how to do a sequel.
The Story
In Time-Marked Warlock, Adair Finch had to make a deal with a spirit named Kull, who wanted a human body. When we open Chronos Warlock, Adair has found one body in particular: a murdered influencer named Fox-Pistol. At the same time, Finch has been hired by an old client to find out where his wife disappears to every weekend.
The resulting book becomes a complex mystery with serial killers, slum lord, organized crime elves, werewolves, and the most insidious creatures of all, social media streamers.
Chronos Warlock is superior to Time-Marked Warlock. Only part of the equation is that Chronos Warlock lacks an annoying child sidekick. This is a well-crafted mystery with complexities on par with a Dashell Hamett. (Okay, maybe not that convoluted.)
When Rex Stout wrote his Nero Wolfe mysteries, he had an ability to show the reader the solution to the mystery before the reader even knows what the main question of the mystery is. Shami Stovall pulls off the same ability here, and quite well. There is nothing wasted here—not a single scene. On the one hand, it makes some of the mysteries easy to solve, because Chronos Warlock lacks red herrings. On the other hand? There is so much going on, good luck solving all of them. Stovall plays perfectly fair with all of the mysteries, but it’s a tangled web.
It’s also a fun ride, watching Finch deal with the competing and conflicting desires and needs of friends, enemies and clients. Book one was very much The Art of the Deal, but with an overwrought child along for the right, pushing Finch to fix problems unrelated to the central mystery. Chronos Warlock is superior because all the problems must to be solved in order to have an overall solution to the various and sundry conflicts.
Once the mystery begins, Chronos Warlock is surprisingly face-paced. Stovall doesn’t rely on the amount of action and explosions of Harry Dresden, but still keeps up a tight run throughout. Also, in book one, I rarely felt that Finch or anyone else was truly threatened; for Chronos Warlock, one definitely feels the tension and danger.
But this isn’t The Dresden Files, no matter how many times the word “quip” is overused; it will give the reader quiplash, and that’s not a joke.
The Characters
Finch is still as cranky as ever. He’s not quite as much of a misanthrope as in the last book, there’s some development, but life has done a number on him.
One of the more interesting things is that, while the pace never lets up, at the same time, there is a lot of character development. The spirit Kull has a new body, and all of the emotions and drama that comes with being human. She has an interesting learning curve throughout the course of this repeating day. To some extent, she’s even responsible for the next book.
Come to think of it, it’s hard to cover all the various and sundry gears turning for all the characters involved here. Keep reading, I’ll explain.
The World
The world impacts a lot here, both the plot and the character backgrounds. Heck, there is even an odd socio-economic divide between the various mythological creatures here. It even impacts food.
Heck, it’s nice to have police officers competent with the world of magic. (Who needs rubber bullets, when they have warlocks with a paralytic touch?)
The werewolves that appear are shaped and influenced by their curse, how the wolves treat themselves, and how they fit within this urban fantasy hierarchy.
The elves who show up … well, they are traditional, pre-Tolkien elves fitting into the modern world, and all that comes with it. Of course they would be organized crime variants.
There is even a subculture for spirits, like Kull, who also taken over human bodies … and don’t cope very well.
Let’s not even get into the strange and bizarre world of social media influencers. (Thankfully, this did not turn into an episode of Entourage, but I was concerned for a bit.)
Worst of all, this takes place largely in Oakland California, which comes with all of its own challenges and problems.
Politics
The only “politics” here is mentioning all of the mental health institutions shut down by California, releasing inmates into the street.
Other than that? If you want to see current-day politics in this, you have problems.
Content Warning
There are discussions of a sexual nature, largely trying to explain things like sex. But Finch reacts poorly to anything harsher than PG-13 language, so it’s rare.
Who is it for?
If you like Harry Dresden or Daniel Humphreys, with the mystery building level of Rex Stout, you’re going to enjoy Chronos Warlock.
Why buy it?
Chronos Warlock is a tightly-written well-crafted mystery within the urban fantasy genre, keeping up the rapid pace of a Harry Dresden novel, without needing all of the explosions.