Starcrossed by Allie Therin

Narrated by Erik Bloomquist

Allie Therin’s engaging Magic in Manhattan series sets an intriguing combination of supernatural relics, powerful psychics, romance and magic amid prohibition era New York. Starcrossed is the second book, and you really do need to have read or listened to book one, Spellbound, in order to get to grips with it. I read and reviewed it in print when it came out in May 2020, and even though I HAD read book one, I found myself a bit lost to start with because there’s hardly any recapping and I wished I’d done a re-read to refresh my memory. But once I’d skimmed a few sections in Spellbound, I was up to speed and able to enjoy the story in Starcrossed.

There are spoilers for Spellbound in this review.

It’s Manhattan in 1925, and twenty-year-old psychometric Rory Brodigan works as an antiques appraiser in his aunt’s shop, earning the place a reputation as the place to go to sort out the fake from the real thing. This is because Rory’s paranormal ability means he’s able to touch an object and be transported into its history (which can also be incredibly dangerous as it’s possible he could end up trapped in that history in his mind) – and he’s something of a recluse, staying very much in the background and taking care not to reveal his ability to anyone. In Spellbound, handsome, wealthy congressman’s son Arthur Kenzie brought some letters to Mrs. Brodigan’s shop for appraisal, and through the course of the story Rory met other paranormals (Jade, a telekinetic, and Zhang, who can walk on the Astral Plane), and learned that that while Arthur has no magic himself, he’s dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural relics that could destroy it. He and Arthur also commenced a romantic relationship – although that’s not the strongest part of the story.

Starcrossed opens shortly after the dramatic events at the end of Spellbound, and Arthur has taken Rory and his aunt out of the city to his family’s estate in upstate New York, to let Rory rest and so that they can spend a bit of time together. Unfortunately, things don’t work out that way, as Arthur’s family has pretty much scheduled his every moment and constantly requires his attendance elsewhere, and Rory, though disappointed, is not surprised. He still finds it difficult to believe that a man like Arthur – handsome, wealthy and sophisticated – could possibly be interested in a nobody from Hell’s Kitchen.

A day or so before they’re due to return to Manhattan, Arthur learns that a relic – a lodestone – is missing from the inventory of the possessions of one Luther Mansfield, a business mogul who had traded in dangerous magical artefacts. Arthur is eager to get back to the city so he can start trying to locate the lodestone, but is obligated to attend a fundraiser for his brother John, who is preparing to run for the Senate. It’s yet one more frustration he has to set aside – although he does manage to obtain some intriguing information from Mansfield’s lawyer, who is nervous and cagey and speaks vaguely of seeing inexplicable things before clamming up and telling Arthur to forget it. A day later, Arthur is disturbed when his brother tells him about a dream he’d had, of Arthur during the war in a situation Arthur has never revealed to anyone. Someone is using magic on his brother and, as later becomes clear, on Arthur, too, when his dreams, ones he’s had since the war, take on a grotesque, nightmarish quality they’ve never had before.

When Jade and Zhang begin to notice disturbances in their magic, and Rory dreams of a murder committed by one of the figures who features in Arthur’s nightmares, it becomes evident that there is some very strong, very dark magic at work – and the appearance of a relic linked to the worst, most vile kind of magic serves to ramp up the tension as Rory, Arthur, Jade and Zhang race to find answers – and receive help (of a sort) from a most unexpected quarter.

The plot is clever and well-developed, and the author once again does a great job of integrating the prohibition era setting and the details of her secret magical world into the story. The pacing lags a bit around the middle as the story gets a bit bogged down with Arthur’s family obligations – they want him to accompany an English viscount to a society wedding (a viscount who just happens to be Arthur’s wartime ex – cue Rory almost blowing apart Jade’s speakeasy with his magical jealousy!) – and too many times, he has to rush off in the middle of important plot developments because he has to be somewhere else, and it feels as though he and Rory spend quite a lot of this book apart.

Arthur and Rory are engaging characters, and I’m glad that Rory has left behind most of the bratty behaviour he exhibited in the first book. Thankfully, he’s still the same quick-tempered adorable grump who uses snark to hide his vulnerability, and his devotion to Arthur and keeping him safe are absolutely unshakeable. But… I’m still not completely convinced by the romantic aspect of the story. While there are some lovely, tender moments between the pair, and it’s clear they’d do anything for each other, there’s something missing I can’t quite put my finger on (and it’s not entirely because the sex scenes are fade to black, although I do think the author has missed an opportunity to create a greater intimacy there). I do, however, appreciate that Ms. Therin doesn’t gloss over the fact that the difference in their social class provides just as much of a barrier to their relationship as does the fact that they’re both men; outside their small circle of friends, Arthur and Rory need an acceptable reason to spend time together, something Arthur doesn’t need in order to spend time with a man of his own class.

I decided to review Starcrossed because I thought I’d give narrator Erik Bloomquist another try. I listened to him ruin Charlie Adhara’s The Wolf at Bay back in August 2019, but I’ve seen a few reviews saying his work on subsequent books has been better, so I decided to see if that assessment was correct. Well, there has been some improvement, but I’m not in a hurry to listen to him again. In my 2019 review, I pointed out that Mr. Bloomquist was possibly the fastest narrator I’d ever heard; I also called him animated and said that he injected a reasonable amount of expression into the narrative. However, he seems to have gone from one extreme to the other, because now his is pacing is too slow with lots of long pauses, and he’s lost most of the animation and expression that was present before. His voice is pleasant, but it’s monotonous to the point of being soporific in the narrative, and while his portrayal of Rory is great – lively and a bit cheeky – Arthur sounds like he’d rather be elsewhere most of the time. Mr. Bloomquist reads Arthur’s dialogue with a kind of self-satisfied drawl that makes sense given who Arthur is, but he never sounds bothered about anything, his tone completely at odds with what’s going on in the story. There’s a scene in the early part of the book where Arthur fears for Rory’s safety after Rory inadvertently conjures up a snowstorm – but there’s no sense of fear or urgency in Arthur’s voice whatsoever. On the plus side, Mr. Bloomquist differentiates effectively between most of the characters and provides distinct voices for them, using a variety of tone and accent (although the low-pitched growl he uses for Zhang sounded like it must hurt!) and his English accent isn’t bad; it slips a few times, but on the whole is surprisingly decent.

Even though I’m not sold on the romance, I’m enjoying the Magic in Manhattan series for the setting and the storylines and since writing this review, I’ve read and enjoyed book three, Wonderstruck. But I won’t be listening to the audiobook version.

Caz

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