Book Twenty-One of my 2013 Goal

MAGICK IN THE CITY by Zakariyya Ishaq
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Magick in the City by Zakariyya Ishaq starts off with one heck of an opening. It is the formation of a magical ring in London and a ritual murder in New York. Then the story starts three weeks earlier with Locke & Keys Investigations located in Manhattan, NY and tells a bit of history of the company as well as who the employees and partners are. One night when John Locke was in the office finishing up a letter he had a visitor named Walter Lewis who wanted Locke to investigate his father's disappearance twenty- five years earlier. Walter explains that his father went on this hunting trip with four friends and never came back and his friends said he just disappeared. When Walter asked his family, police, other people he got no where. Then Walter told Locke a strange tale about "Magick, Freemasonry, witchcraft, conjuring the devil, the occult, secret wars, old grudges against elite organizations, and other dark secrets".

I like reading before bed to relax but this is a story that I needed to pay close attention to because of the multiple story lines and there are a lot of characters and organizations throughout. In fact, I found I had a difficult time remembering all of them. Although I enjoyed the story I can't help feel I was missing something because of this.

I am not a professional reviewer, I just like reading books so please bear with me at my attempt to explain this. This story was written in a way that I ( as the reader ) was not drawn into the story, I was not part of it in any way but more like on the outside "looking in". I am not sure if that 'disconnection' was purposely done by the author or if it is just me and perhaps this is the part 'I was missing' as I mentioned above. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the story as I said but this was just so odd to me to feel this way since I usually am drawn to characters and really 'get into' a story. Then again, this may have been done purposely by the author because if I had a close connection with a character or into the story I would possibly find this a nightmare and disturbing especially with the praying to and the conjuring of the devil.

The story is not a quick read by any means and there was something going on all of the time however I didn't feel the transition into these places or events were as seamless as they could have been so it was a bit choppy although it did come all together in the end.. The plot is good and stayed on course with the characters being believable for the most part. What I expected to happen and what did happen were usually two different things, the surprise factor was great. There was plenty of suspense, horror, and twists to keep me turning page after page.

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