Yzabel / October 10, 2015

The Conquering Dark by Clay Griffith

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

The Crown and Key Society face their most terrifying villain yet: Gaios, a deranged demigod with the power to destroy Britain.

To avenge a centuries-old betrayal, Gaios is hell-bent on summoning the elemental forces of the earth to level London and bury Britain. The Crown and Key Society, a secret league consisting of a magician, an alchemist, and a monster-hunter, is the realm’s only hope—and to stop Gaios, they must gather their full strength and come together as a team, or the world will fall apart.
 
But Simon Archer, the Crown and Key’s leader and the last living magician-scribe, has lost his powers. As Gaios searches for the Stone of Scone, which will give him destructive dominion over the land, monster-hunter Malcolm MacFarlane, alchemist extraordinaire Kate Anstruther, gadget geek Penny Carter, and Charlotte the werewolf scramble to reconnect Simon to his magic before the world as they know it is left forever in ruins.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

I have to admit I read this third installment because I had received a copy to review, and I didn’t want to let it go to oblivion; however, I wouldn’t have picked it otherwise.

A lot of points I made in my reviews of the first two novels stand here again. The action scenes had a spectacular side, yet in the grand scheme of things didn’t bring that much to the plot nor to the characters. The magic system—”speaking a secret word” doesn’t do much for me (I want technobabble, to make the magic look “real”, like something the character truly masters and knows about). Again, the book read like a draft more than like an edited version (I’m not talking about proofing here), even considering it was an ARC; I could sense a lot of telling instead of showing scenes and thoughts, as well as sentence structures that could, and should, have been polished. I can only hope this was different in the final, printed version.

Also problematic was the characters’ growth. More time was devoted to Imogen and Charlotte, which was great, because their relationships with Kate for the one and Malcom for the other provide good opportunities for questioning. Who needs to accept whom? What if Imogen never goes back to being “human”? Can she accept that? And what of the monster hunter’s affection for the very creature he’s supposed to hunt? Unfortunately, they were more part of the story as new additions to the group, fighting alongside with the others—cf. the first action scene, making everybody look as if they’re some kind of badass society of supernatural-savvy people who’ve been fighting crime together for years. The gap between the events of book 2 and 3 (a few months) removes plenty of possibilities here, as we go for instance from one Imogen to a completely different one, without getting to see her evolve fully; this would’ve been very interesting to witness, at least in my opinion.

Penny was still full of fun and useful ideas (the battle fan: for when a lady cannot bring a gun). The others, though, I couldn’t really push myself to care about. The villain’s motives were somewhat shallow, which didn’t make them very interesting as characters either. More insight about Ash, Gaios and Byron’s relationships would’ve been necessary, to fully get why their group imploded for starters, and why everything turned sour to the point of a full-out war between Ash and Gaios. “Because I loved him and he didn’t love me back” is a bit… simplistic.

The story read like an average action movie, and was somewhat entertaining, but I already know I won’t remember much about it very soon.