Life is good for Hieromancer (i.e., demon-wielding hitman) Don Drake. Except, no, it’s not really good. In fact, it’s gone from kind of bad to downright awful. We meet Drake in the middle of a seedy card game in an even seedier bar – one frequented by demons and humans alike. McLean does a bang-up job of outlining Drake’s personality within this opening chapter. Within those pages, we see Drake get absolutely hammered on a combination of free high-end whiskey followed by cheap dollar store liquor, chase his losses in a card game that he eventually loses to a high-ranking but business-minded demon, have a one-night stand with a suspiciously beautiful redhead, and meet the center of Drake’s power: a demon that goes by the title “The Burned Man.”

Don Drake is a bit of an all-around fuckup. He drinks too much (although, as pointed out in a flashback, doesn’t truck with drugs too often). Despite having worlds of talent at his fingertips, he doesn’t employ it properly, and instead relies too much on The Burned Man to do his work. The one steady influence in his life is an alchemist named Debbie who he cheats and steals from. Deep down, however, he still has a small desire to be good. To do good. That is his redeeming quality.

Plot-wise, the book can be summed up as thus: Drake gets in more trouble than he can handle and has to turn to others for help. Others, in this case, being of the demonic and spiritual sort. In doing so, he attracts the wrath of the Furies, not to mention a few other powers-that-be who will not be named for fear of giving too much away. He gets the shit kicked out of him in nearly every chapter, is usually one bad-tempered demon away from getting cratered in the ground, and tells enough lies to re-brick all of China’s Great Wall.

If you like your protagonists to wear capes and beat the snot out of their enemies with heroically flaming swords, Drake isn’t for you. If you have an aversion to foul language, Drake may not be your cup of tea. If sex scenes and the world’s most cynical view of life make you cringe, I’d suggest leaving Drake on the shelf.

But, if you’re like me, then all those things make the book even more tantalizing.

Talking strengths, the Drake’s biggest is probably McLean’s use of his characters. Drake, being the story’s protagonist, is very well-done. He manages to be likable while still being a nearly irredeemable bag of dogshit. Being a first-person tale, the bulk of the characterization focuses upon him, and the rest of the people take a hit for it, but not overly so. The Furies aren’t terribly well-drawn, but they don’t need to be as they’re just essentially faceless villains for the real plotline to speed along. Debbie (Drake’s more off-than-on girlfriend) is a fun sort, while Trixie, though not necessarily fully-drawn in this first book, was laid out for a lot of growth in the upcoming novels.

The violence was fun while never delving into the gratuitous, and the the curse words fell along the same lines. Obviously there, obviously purposely there, and equally obviously not going to disappear anytime soon. It comes with the territory.

Plot-wise, additional complexity might have helped. Most of the “twists” were either too predictable or too obvious. For instance, at the end of one chapter Drake picks up an amulet because it “might be useful”, then goes on to find its utility less than a page later. Reading it, I would have rather him just shoved it in his pocket and been out the door rather than taking the time to explain why he did it. Instances like that occur with too much regularity for me to pronounce the plot as anything more than acceptably interesting.

All in all, it reminds me (a lot) of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Series. You can interchange Dan Drake for Harry Dresden, The Burned Man for Bob the Skull, Debbie for Karrin and Trixie for Michael Carpenter, the differences being that Drake is the darker and more cynical of the two. And, in comparison to the series as a whole, Drake pales.

However, if you remember the early books of the Dresden Series, you’ll remember that it started off slow and has since become a blistering sort of popular. But it took until about the fifth or sixth book to hit that pace. Considering how successful Harry Dresden has been for him, I think it a compliment to say that Drake is about as readable and entertaining of the first book concerning Harry Dresden, Storm Front. 

Do I think Mclean could improve? Yup.

Would I buy Drake again? Yup.

Will I read the next book in McLean’s series, due (according to Amazon) in November 2016? Yup.

Entertaining, outlandishly dark and cynical, this is not going to be a series for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy the bitter side of life, it is definitely a series destined for our bookshelves.

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