- ASIN: B09435JJ67
- Language: English
- Print length: 254 pages
- Genre: Fantasy Adventure
Summary
All Boone wants is to keep a promise to a friend. The same friend, he almost killed last Sunday during a joust.Can a small-town Missouri musician outplay the supernatural and save NYC’s soul? The Devil Pulls the Strings is the pulse-pounding first tale in the Archivists series. If you like when tortured heroes, epic battles, time travel, twisted history and secret societies collide, then you’ll love J. W. Zarek’s spectacular page-turner.
The BookViral Review:
Fast-paced, stylised and hugely readable it is always refreshing to review something a little different and with the intriguing title “The Devil Pulls The Strings” Zarek certainly delivers! Taking a genre populated with mediocrity to give us a story that springs to life with an abundance of action sequences, quantum tunnels and pocket dimensions that read like they’ve been storyboarded straight off the pages of a comic book.
Crafting a succinct and well-paced plot that quickly gets to the crux of the genre whilst rapidly building intrigue and suspense it’s fair to say Zarek’s not an author to labour in the detail. He has a colourfully dynamic and visual imagination that seldom lets up and you get an immediate sense of the passion and enjoyment in his writing.
Of course, any novel of note rises and falls on the strength of its characters and here both Boone Daniels and Sapphire Anjou prove far from pedestrian. Add a little humour and strong backstories and they each have more than enough across-the-board appeal to attract mainstream readers as well.
But a great read in any genre must go beyond its lead protagonists and this is where Zarek really comes into his own. With his historical references to ‘The Devils Violinist’ Niccolò Paganini and the dark stories that surrounded his life elevating, ‘The Devil Pulls The Strings to the extraordinary. Whilst a foray into Slavic folklore and the supernatural character of Baba Yaga adds another deliciously dark dimension that leads to a cracking denouement in which Boone finds himself facing impossible choices.
Further underpinned by an outstanding cast of auxiliary characters such as Wickhamby, Rizos and Pip The Devil Pulls The Strings proves a remarkable debut for Zarek with everything a reader could want from a top-notch fantasy read. An exhilarating read that ensnares the imagination and is recommended without reservation.