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The Ambivalent Magician | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Simon Hawke | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | The Reluctant Sorcerer, The Inadequate Adept, The Ambivalent Magician | ||
Doc is in trouble. The twenty-seven kingdoms are invading the (not so) sleepy (not so) little town of Brigand's Roost in response to the outlaw sorcerer's actions. The fact that Doc isn't a sorcerer at all is beside the point. Revolution is a stone's throw away in Pitt, and Pamela is still without her fiancee. But never fear, this is the third and emphatically the last in the series, and it wraps pretty much everything up.
It's still a good book, but it's not a great one like the other two. For one thing, there are some continuity errors. The name of the wizard that put Brian under his wre-chamberpot spell changes, and worse, in book two Pamela confronts the CEO of EnGulfCo about her being followed and her phone tapped. She is quite emphatic about it, says she realized it instantly, she's not stupid, and gets the CEO to back down. In book three here, though, she discovers she is being followed, and is very disturbed and a little frightened by the fact. And it does not read as the CEO continuing surveilance despite their encounter, either.
But those are really pretty minor problems. Warrick is more of a foil for the author than he is for the hero! The thing with him interfering with the narration is starting to get old. It's just not funny anymore.
But the worst fault I could find was that the narrator told the climax instead of showing it. He does this several times in all the books, but that's okay because it makes the books very fast paced. But not the climax of the whole series! It's something of a letdown. Hawke breaks a lot of rules, but here he just breaks one too many.
The book is still fun, despite what was done to the climax. I still laughed, and the epilogue is rather interesting. It's a good book. Just not as good as the first two.
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