Book Chop: Hard Magic (Grimnoir Chronicles #1)

Title: Hard Magic
Author: Larry Correia
Genre: Noir/Historical Fiction/Speculative/Probably a few others
Verdict: A complete success.

When Larry Correia said that the first Grimnoir Chronicles title was the best book he'd ever written, he wasn't just being his usual animated self. The juice is worth the squeeze with this one.

History gets a nice shakedown with this series. People all around the world start developing magical abilities (mostly akin to superpowers, think X-Men) during the 1800s, and this changes the course of several worldwide wars. The most notable among these is World War One, in which America employs "actives" (people who use magic) along with high-tech weapons and equipment developed by the likes of Nikola Tesla. Because of these developments, World War Two never happened, Hitler was executed before rising to power, Japan becomes America's biggest threat, and a brewing social conflict between actives and normals looms on the horizon.

Enter Jake Sullivan, an active "heavy" (he prefers the term "spiker") with the ability to manipulate gravity. He's a veteran of the Great War, the youngest of three boys, and a convict who was sprung early from jail so he could help the FBI bring in criminal actives. Sully works with the likes of Melvin Purvis and J. Edgar Hoover (both portrayed well in the book), and he's one job away from full freedom. Things are looking fine until he has a run-in with the Grimnoir, a group of organized actives who are actually fighting to save the world from evil magicians.

From there, the story is a rip-roaring ride of fun and intrigue. Correia shows his very adept hands when it comes to manipulating history and science for interesting storylines. The writing is an improvement over what he's shown in the MONSTER HUNTER books, and I think the fact that this one is written in third person really lends itself well to revealing the deep characters. Everyone in here has a good backstory, and it's all relevant to telling the tale as a whole.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Bronson Pinchot, who also did ON STRANGER TIDES. The guy is awesome. I think it was better than it would have been, had I read it in print. To put a rating on it, it's a solid R, for language and violence (lotta gore) but no sexual content.

A fun book, and I'm looking forward to the next book in this series even more than I'm looking forward to the next MONSTER HUNTER.

Enjoy.