A review by tyrshand
American Magic: A Thriller by Zach Fehst

3.0

Eh, this is an excellent example of why I shouldn't read thrillers. To me, it seems like they are so focused on action that they don't flesh out the random cool ideas that ought to be the backbone of the plot. So, we have things like researchers who come up with some pretty wild conclusions but never explain how they got there since it would be IMPOSSIBLE. Why yes, somehow I deduced all this stuff about prehistory with no artifacts or anything... Or later on when our hero uses the knowledge of TWO spells to somehow correctly extrapolate to completely unrelated spells... and then just keep rambling on into "cool idea" territory with even less evidence. It drives me nuts. Or the way that one of the major villains is just so ridiculous. Yeah, stories about villains whose pride or whatever gets in the way of their victory can be quite satisfying. But only if they seem competent in the first place.

Anyway, I'm going to stop ranting and just say three stars because I think people who DO like thrillers probably won't care about that and can just enjoy the ride.