The Tenth Man

Title: The Tenth Man
Author: Tamara Sheehan
Publisher: Prizm Books
Genre: Young Adult, Speculative Fiction
Length: 136 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

A guest review by Kris

The Blurb:

Saul Hornsby is the last magician living in Verusa. Thanks to a plot to destroy the plant where his father was killed, Saul is a wanted man. He has enough problems just hiding from police, and that’s before Edward Audel, the most powerful man in Verusa, starts blackmailing him.

Forced into working for Audel, Saul begins searching for a lost family heirloom. The trail takes him under the city, into a dirty subterranean lair where Audel’s runaway son, Toven, lives in hiding.

Soon Saul will discover his past, no matter how deeply buried, isn’t dead, and that love can be found in the strangest of places. His love for Toven grows, even as he strives to find the truth behind his father’s death, and soon Saul, Toven and a shadowy figure known as the Tenth Man join forces to break free of Audel’s influence and reclaim their lives.

The Review:

Honesty from the outset~ An interesting book from this new-to-me author. I will definitely be reading more of her work in the future.

First things first~

The Tenth Man is a well written story, which, soon after it begins, sweeps the reader up into the fast-paced adventure of its main character Saul Hornsby.  Now, when I say ‘fast’ I do mean that literally with the story taking place over an approximately two day period; the length of time given to Saul to locate a ‘missing’ heirloom required by his blackmailer, Edward Audel.

As one of the few – if not the only – magicians remaining in Verusa, Saul has the ability to find the heirloom as well as the man wearing it, who happens to be Audel’s son Toven.  However, like all good blackmail schemes, the plan to recover and return the lost item begins to unravel as soon as Saul and Toven meet and later when Audel steps too far in his efforts to secure Saul’s cooperation.  It is then Saul recognises he will need to find the courage to reclaim his life and take his revenge on the man he holds responsible for his father’s death.  Good stuff.  🙂

I had mixed feelings about the character of Saul.  I found him a flawed character who at various times seemed arrogant, ineffectual, manipulative and clueless.  Having said this, I was sympathetic to both his past and present situations and by the end was crossing my fingers in the hopes that he would kick the bad guys’ arses, thereby indicating that his story worked for me overall.

For me, Saul’s story was certainly more interesting than those of the secondary characters touched upon in the book.  This was not really a surprise because I am a characterisation-ho and it was his character, as the main protagonist, which was by far the best developed – flaws and all.  Even as I wonder now whether some of the POV switches, particularly towards the end of the book, detracted from the telling of what is essentially Saul’s tale, I did wish that the others, Toren especially, had been developed in greater detail.  A little contrary, I know.

In many ways what made The Tenth Man work so well for me, besides being just a good, solid read with a fast moving plot, was the setting.  A modern city where magic, familiars, golems and incubi are well known, yet instead of a standard urban fantasy world the author has created a rich, dark steampunkish feel to the place.  Also, the world building was so subtle that the reader absorbs it as the story moves along and is immersed in the world of Saul and his companions without really realising it.  Loved it.  Loved it muchly.

A couple of issues/warnings~

There were a couple of niggly little things like a few of the POV switches, some minor unanswered questions and whether the romance aspect lived up to the blurb (I would just ignore that if I was you) which I had with The Tenth Man; however, by far my biggest problem was nothing to do with the work itself instead it was a technical matter.

This related to the fact that my ebook version seemed to have lost the majority of its spacing.  This meant there were times when it took me a few moments to work out whose part of the story I was reading and a couple of times where I was confused because I’d thought information had been found out by one character, but it hadn’t because it was happening to another.  This was annoying and unfortunately gave the initial impression that the author had lost the plot, which is not the case, as opposed to it being layout problems with the ebook or my copy of the ebook at least.  It’s something to be conscious of if anyone picks this up as an ebook.

My recommendation:

As I said from the outset, this is a good, well written and fast paced read from this new-to-me author.  I would recommend it particularly to those readers who enjoy the steampunk genre.  The world building is terrific.