Nathaniel Moore is a myth. He's a witch too powerful to exist and too clever to be caught. He's kept himself young for two hundred and fifty years with life-stealing dark magic and left a long trail of bodies in his wake, but no matter how many Chasers the Magistrate sent after him, not one of them was the challenge he wanted. Elton Willis, a model Chaser for the Magistrate, expected the ultimate villain when he cracked the cold case and tracked Moore to a cheap apartment in Yuma. What he got was an infuriatingly carefree man who smokes like a chimney, laughs at puns, and treats his young apprentice like a daughter. It's an uncomfortable discovery for someone determined to bring the man to the Magistrate's gallows. Further complicating the issue, Elton has accidentally let loose one of Nathan's old enemies--a lich with a vengeful attitude and a thirst for human souls. Now the Chaser is forced to choose between taking Nathan in, which would leave the murderous monster to roam free, or teaming up with the object of his obsession to take the lich down. The obvious answer, of course, is also the option that's the biggest pain in Elton's ass.
T.S. likes to write about what makes people tick, whether that’s deeply-rooted emotional issues, childhood trauma, or just plain hedonism. Throw in a heaping helping of action and violence, a sprinkling of steamy bits, and a whisper of wit (with alliteration optional but preferred), and you have her idea of a perfect novel. She believes in telling stories about real people who live in less-real worlds full of werewolves, witches, demons, vampires, and the occasional alien.
Born and bred in the South, T.S. started writing young, but began writing real novels while working full time as a legal secretary. When she’s not skiving off work to write, she reads other people’s books, plays video games, watches movies, and spends time with her husband and daughter. She hopes her daughter grows into a woman who knows what she wants, grabs it, and gets into significantly less trouble than the women in her mother’s novels.
A few weeks ago I got a hard craving for some witch based fantasy. I took to Twitter to ask for it, and one of the suggestions I received was for T.S. Barnett’s Mentor: The Left Hand Path. I was pretty confident my Twitter folks wouldn’t let me down, and let me down they certainly did not. Mentor was exactly what I needed: A straightforward and fun magical UF adventure with great characters, strong chemistry and funny dialogue.
Nathan Moore is a straight up sociopath, I can’t sugar coat it. If you like your MC to be dashing and noble, this ain’t it. But he’s also fascinating, entertaining as hell, and perhaps one of the most powerful witches ever to have lived. He’s taken Cora, a vulnerable young woman with a shitty family situation, as his apprentice. He feels genuine affection and tenderness for her. This confuses things somewhat, because it means he has actual redeeming qualities at the same time that he’s an unrepentant asshole. I love this kind of dichotomy and Barnett writes him with real skill – he’s hilarious, smug and infuriating, and I found myself both cheering him on and wanting him to be caught throughout the entire novel.
Elton Willis is an uptight magical law enforcement officer who has become obsessed with taking Nathan down, to the detriment of his own personal life. He’s a black coffee and oatmeal kind of guy to Nathan’s self-indulgent pastry loving hedonist, and their odd couple chemistry is absolutely wonderful. When Elton tracks Nathan down and confronts him, he doesn’t count on Cora’s intervention. Just as he’s about to take Nathan out for good, Cora hits him over the head and the pair escape. Our three main characters are then thrown together and forced to cooperate to take down a larger evil that one of them accidentally unleashes early on in the novel.
Mentor relies heavily on its dialogue for exposition and to drive the plot forward, and in some novels this would be a major issue. But dialogue is one of Barnett’s strengths, and I found myself happily carried along. Elton aside, most of the characters are morally grey and it’s interesting to find yourself rooting for people who are objectively pretty terrible but utterly charming. I expected it to be Cora, but as it turns out, Elton is our proxy within the story – as he comes to know Nathan better, he grows conflicted about turning him in. He’s wild and cruel and selfish, but at times he is also tender and caring and complex. It’s a tough call.
In terms of complaints, I have very little. There are some pacing issues and for several stretches of the novel not much happens, but as a character study it’s great stuff. I don’t want to give away the events of the story, but I found it to be engaging and enjoyable with one hell of an ending. This is an author who deserves a lot more attention, and I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel.
Cool story. I got into it very quickly, and there weren't many parts that I skimmed over.
It's about a young girl, blessed with magical ability. She's adopted, so her parents are what are called "mundanes" in the book's world. They can't do magic, and in fact don't even believe that it exists.
Thankfully, she befriends an old man in the same apartment building. He's a powerful witch, but his life is nearing its end, and so he agrees to help her learn to harness her new abilities.
Most of this happens off-camera before the story even begins. We're given a brief introduction to her situation, and the action starts. Nothing is as it seems, as our heroine is dragged along on a whirlwind adventure featuring flashy, powerful magic and fantastic beats. Here be vampires!
The magic seems to be based on real-world magical practices. I can't speak for the authenticity of the spells, not being a practitioner myself, but the author writes confidently and doesn't explain much. It's as if you'll know what she's talking about if you're part of the lifestyle. I quite liked it, and even though I didn't understand what half of the incantations meant, it DID feel natural.
The editing is very good. There's nary a typo to be found for the first ten or fifteen percent of the book. After that, it feels like the editor or author got a LITTLE lazy, because you do see the occasional missing word or punctuation mark. Still, it's a hell of a lot better than most other books I've read, whether traditionally published or not.
And then, one of my biggest bugbears: I got an epub of the book off Instafreebie, and in my version, there wasn't a linked table of contents. I don't know whether that's a thing in the Amazon or Barnes & Noble versions, but it can be frustrating.
Either way, great story. It kind of blurs the lines between Paranormal Fantasy and Magical Realism, because of its descriptions of the magic involved. I settled on Paranormal Fantasy, though, because of the aforementioned vampires.
Much better than I expected. This is not the regular clichéed urban fantasy story the blurb makes it out to be. While nothing in the blurb is strictly wrong it's not what this story is about. It's about the characters that experience the story. And the characters are very well written. They are very flawed, to the point their moral compass (or the lack thereof) made me very uncomfortable sometimes. But this is not a failing on the author's part but a very intentional and fascinating choice. It's about how characters make personal choices and not how objectively virtuous they are. The nature of the characters reminds me of Abercrombie's books but the writing is far less eccentric and artful and not similar. The plot is honestly a bit meandering and not very original or interesting but as I said, it's not really the focus of the story. The story is sufficiently self-contained to work as a standalone, and while I enjoyed the book, I am not entirely sure if I will try out the next one. This was a different experience but I am not sure if it has the steam to keep me interested after I have already gotten to know these unique and quirky characters. But because of how questionable many of their choices were I never really started to care for or connect to any of them. The entire cast could die horribly and I wouldn't care much. I don't really have the urge to find out how their stories continue.
This series immediately caught me hook, line and sinker. Just the first scene alone catches you with a right-hook to the jaw. The scene opens up with Nathan as a wizened old man hooked up to an oxygen tank in a rundown shitty house and I had to go back and re-read the blurb and flip the book to make sure it was the right book. So then you immediately have the hook just from that first paragraph alone: 'How does he get back to being the young man promised to us on the blurb?'
Hint: It's exactly why he's a villian.
The setting is fleshed out and done so well, that you already get a sense of the unease about the Magistrate before you even get revelations from Elton's POV that has you perhaps thinking Elton's the villian and Nathan is the sane rebel...until Nathan promptly drop kicks that idea out of your brain.
I am surprised this book and series doesn't have the large readership it deserves.
Great book. I was engaged from the beginning and didn't skim or get annoyed with the characters. I found myself changing my opinion of the main characters as I got to know them more. That's what is great about this book. It shows that there is good in even the most evil person and a bit of evil even in the good guys.
Welcome to another installment of the Local Author Smorgasbord (yes, I never remember the previous term and change it), where we cut through the offerings of the Gulf Coast’s chefs! This week a course of urban fantasy/horror is ready to be eaten as we tuck into The Left-Handed Path: Mentor. Promising witches, magic, scares, and surprises, will Mentor teach us a new lesson or will it be the same things we learned last year?
Before we enter the classroom, let us finish our punishment by writing down the Starving Review rules one-hundred times:
1. I attempt to rate every book from the perspective of a fan of the genre 2. I attempt to make every review as spoiler-free as possible
Mentor is one of those interesting meals that twists on the plate, like a plate of live octopus. The chef isn’t content with traditional plating, so things work their best to put the traditional rules and tropes on their head. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a grounding in the basics, the core recipe rules of fiction that make for a good story. No, it’s more that Mentor gleefully plays with your expectations, just as it plays with the expectations of its cast of characters.
At its heart, Mentor is a recipe that puts the antagonist among the protagonists. This isn’t quite the traditional type of ‘the bad guy is the good guy’ scenario. No, this is something just a bit different, and it is exciting in that regard. It’s a distinctly different structure than I’ve seen in quite some time, like some mutant ‘tri-protagonist-antagonist-mudslide’ affair. One might flip pages, expecting for that big redemption moment in the end (or the big fall-from-grace moment), and yet … well … to say more other than this vague implication would be SPOILERS. Needless to say, it’s an intriguing element and one that the chef handles with aplomb.
What about the other core elements? World-building is handled through the titular Mentoring of one of our merry band, providing a conduit for exposition that isn’t heavy-handed or info-dump-y. As something that is most definitely character-driven, Barnett took the time to fully bake her cast, letting them rise in the oven before putting them in scene. Even most of the secondary characters have a fair bit of heft to them.
If there’s any quibble at first bite, it would be the eventual conclusion of the arc involving another antagonist. However, the truth is that this isn’t a mistake or a rushed arc. No, after eating the final bite and letting it settle, I realized what seems to be the ‘real’ antagonist is, in fact, just a smaller threat, a mere catalyst for the story, with the real antagonist (which might be considered one of two people, depending on your viewpoint and beliefs) has always been sitting in our circle of pro-antaga-trioists.
So, to close this up, The Left-Hand Path: Mentor is a twisty-turny fantasy/horror sweet roll that is good to the last bite! If you are a fan of darker fantasy tales, interesting character dramas, and stories with a touch of horror to them, I’d suggest you put this in your pantry right away. If you just can’t stand horror or prefer simple, straight-forward tales, you might want to look for another meal.
FINAL VERDICT: ***** (A twisty-turny fantasy/horror sweet roll that is good to the last bite!)
This one was difficult for me to rate. I enjoyed the story, but had a few qualms with the story-telling method. Overall, I decided on 3.75 stars.
The world-building in "Mentor" is well-done; there's no info-dumping to bore readers out of their skulls. I love the humor, particularly of the Mentor himself (Nathan). There was a satisfactory amount of action, and the overall story is well-paced. Character development is decent, though I would've liked a bit more out of the apprentice. T.S. Barnett's voice is pretty well-developed and, for the most part, fun to read. There's also a mostly satisfying climax and resolution.
My biggest qualms involved POV and the question of protagonist and climax/conclusion. The tale is told in third person omniscient, which was established from the first few pages; that's a good start. However, I found that this actually resulted in us missing out on critical pieces that were "told" from a high level, whereas it might've been easier to "show" if it had been third person focused. I felt like there were many missed opportunities with this method, particularly getting to some of the higher emotion/action scenes. I wasn't sure what to feel for whom because I wasn't in any of the characters' heads.
Going hand-in-hand with this is the question of who the protagonist is. I realize the first introduced character doesn't necessarily end up being the protagonist in all cases. In this case, though, I had a hard time identifying the protagonist. It felt for awhile that it should've been the apprentice as we learn about her goals and journey in becoming a witch like Nathan. But Nathan is obviously the life of the party here, and it's ultimately his (and his rival's) demon - or lich, in this case - who is fought in the end. Motives and perspective weren't clear enough to me, and I would've liked to go deeper into each individual's mind to establish the protagonist and better relate to them.
A story about dark magics, witches, lichs and magical beings set in a modern day, run down world. But also a story about a 'cop' after a 'criminal', and a story about a teacher and his student. Perhaps more importantly, it's a story about people. It's a little slow on big action scenes, but that's hardly a downfall in this book's case, as the story is mostly the journey. In a very poignant way, Elton and Nathan represent two extremes in their natures, and yet are not so extreme that they seem to operate as caricatures of themselves, making them very believable. Cora is the reader's voice, feeling her way out between the two, and most of the characters the readers meet fall somewhere between the spectrum they create. Somehow all the characters actions are presented in ways that really make you understand their point of view. The way magic works in the world is a great fusion of traditional beliefs and touches of fantasy, and the hints of different methods of working it are just as fun to read about as the interaction between the main characters.
I loved this book! There's magic, set in today's world, 3 people - one a criminal, one a law enforcer and one in the middle! Add in some humor and it's perfect! Cora, the one in the middle - I liked watching her grow as a person, become stronger and more confident in herself. Nathan, the criminal, the way he took in Cora, mentored her and cared for her, this was such a contrast to how his life was previous to meeting her. Finding out some of the things he did as the story went on was a bit surprising, though, it should be expected, he is a criminal after all. Elton, the one determined to take in Nathan, the opposite of Nathan, yet, I think they were a lot alike in some way. He did had respect for Nathan and what he was capable of. I also appreciate all the bits of historical info about magic and beliefs that was in this book. I'm looking forward to the next book as I want to see what's next for Cora, Nathan and Elton!
It may not have been the story I quite expected but it was certainly entertaining. In the beginning it was a little difficult to truly get into the novel due to my personal feelings about the characters cavalier nature. I almost expected to be more focused on the chaser but it was more focused on the villain. However, the story developed really well towards the middle & I'm even happy with its ending. Rarely am I ever happy with a book's ending. I will be looking forward to reading the sequel.
Awesome, funny, gritty, urban fantasy. I love the relationships that develop between each of the characters, whether they're good or bad. I also love how attentive to detail Barnett is when it comes to historical styles of magic.
Definitely check it out if you like the Dresden Files or if you're a fan of Supernatural.
What could be more exciting then going up against something that would like to kill you? Doing so with someone who wants you arrested. Throw in a clueless third party and you have the best book I've read in some time.
The dynamics and setting are out of this world. I push Barnett's books on every friend that will put up with me. The Left-Hand Path is by far my new favorite.
Expertly written. I couldn't put it down! I can't wait till the next book comes out! ! Nathan worked his way into my heart and I just want to hold Elton and tell him everything is going to be okay. More! Give me more!