Here’s the blurb;
“A magical, mischievous mystery perfect for fans of Douglas Adams and Ben Aaronovitch
How do you stop a demon invasion… when you don’t believe in magic? Inspector Nick Paris is a man of logic and whisky. So staring down at the crucified form of a murder victim who is fifteen centimetres tall leaves the seasoned detective at a loss… and the dead fairy is only the beginning.
Suddenly the inspector is offering political asylum to dwarves, consulting with witches, getting tactical advice from elves and taking orders from a chain-smoking talking crow who, technically, outranks him.
With the fate of both the human and magic worlds in his hands Nick will have to leave logic behind and embrace his inner mystic to solve the crime and stop an army of demons from invading Manchester!”
I am a fan of quirky fantasy (Robert Rankin/Terry Pratchett) and was intrigued by the concept of Breaking the Lore. And for about 50% of the book I really quite enjoyed it. It’s not a difficult read, the chapters are short, the characters quite fun – although Malbus is the standout character. However, the story quickly ran out of steam, and I found the last 40% really hard to get into. At this point, the really short chapters didn’t help a great deal, the jokes were all getting a bit stale, and Nick Paris was spending a lot of his time ‘pondering’ but never really finding any answers to his questions, or indeed, doing a great deal to find the answers.
There’s a great deal of potential in Breaking the Lore, but in the end, it fails to live up to that potential, and I was just pleased to get to the end.
With a little less pondering, more of Nick Paris actually doing some police work and following up on his hunches as opposed to leaving them hanging in an effort to extend the story, this could be a really fun book. Perhaps Book 2 will be stronger.
A firm 3/5. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.
Breaking the Lore was released on 15th April 2019 and is available now from here;
M J Porter 