Sometimes the fairy tale’s end is just the Grimm beginning.Mammon’s summoning turned Rochester into a beacon for the denizens of Hell. As demon activity increases, Jon settles in for a new academic year, and Jordan moves in as the city’s protector. Unfortunately, the young warlock of Rochester might not be around long if the Devil’s marine legion has a say. Havfine, demonic mermaids, don’t often … don’t often leave deep lakes and ocean waters. They’re better known for drowning mortal sailors than hunting magic users, but something has sent them upstream from Lake Ontario.
When three orphans vanish from a magical sanctuary in Toronto, their caretaker – the Wizard Monday – dredges up a part of Jordan’s and Jon’s father’s history that Jordan would have rather forgotten. In this race against the Bane of Hamelin, more than three souls may be on the line.
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3 1/2 stars
This is book two of the Warlock of Rochester and the main character is the young warlock in training Jon Blythe, who is now sharing an apartment with his friend Tyson and two other guys, Tommy and Joel. He is attending college and stacked his classes into just a couple of days, expecting his mentor and trainer in all things magic, Jordan Ostairius, to give him lessons after class each of his free days. He is sorely mistaken and Jordan agrees to train him only at the weekends. Even then, he is mainly made aware of demons in the city of Rochester, the increase in numbers down to Mammon’s summoning, that Jordan was unable to stop. Jordan has now moved and become the new protector for the city, as he is also the Source. One lesson Jordan gives him, is to learn how to walk on water, but that doesn’t turn out very well, when a demonic creature called a Havfine, decides to take Jon for a trip down under! The pair also discover two dead women’s bodies, two of the three Daughters for the area, who have not been returning anyone’s calls. Another is still alive, as far as Jordan can sense, and they set out to save her. Only problem being that Lake Ontario has been infested with a large number of these Havfine, not just the one they found in the local river!
Jordan is also pulled in another direction, when Wizard Malcolm Monday, who runs a school for orphaned magic users, the Grith in Toronto, asks for his help after three of his children disappeared and it is feared that the Pied Piper of Hamelin has return, after not being seen for almost eight hundred years. Jon has been hoping Jordan would impart some knowledge about his father Jokul, who Jon doesn’t know, and it seems Malcolm knows a thing or two about them, having refused entry for his father when Jordan, both of whom were but boys at the time, was not offered sanctuary at the same time, and ended up on the streets until the age of sixteen. All Jordan can tell him about his father, is that there was an apparent sighting of him recently, crossing a border. Now, they need to concentrate and find the missing children, which leads them to a very dangerous demon, Shiloh, and a surprising discovery by Jon, with far more than just three souls on the line if they cannot defeat this demon. This book has a couple of set pieces with Jon and Jordan having to fight against dangerous demons, but on the whole wasn’t as interesting for me, as the first book. The pace was quite slow in this one and more conjecture about finding out more about his father and wanting to learn a few new magic tricks from a reluctant mentor, than anything else. Highlights are the battles against the various demons and the children. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
Jon is back with another adventure. In this story get to meet more demons and new characters. I liked that the old characters also popped in too. The story was interesting but a slower pace then the last one as tension built as Jon and Jordan struggle to solve what is going on but figuring out who is in the water. Was kind of funny to watch Jon juggle figuring out the demon issue and his school/friends. But in the end I thought it was a good story and gave more background to this world.