Dima Zales’ The Sorcery Code is heavy. Everything about the fantasy is leaden with importance. Zales wraps a steamy romance in a tapestry of magic, complete with fish-out-of-water subplots, magical intrigue, political deception, and not to mention the burden of inner conflicts.
Zales’ weighty fantasy is loaded with backstory and cool magical spells such as Life Captures which allow for the user to envelop themselves into another’s life. Code’s early strength lies in the rich description of the magical world, and the steamy sexual tension between Blaise, Gala, Augusta, Barson. The prose pushes forward with lots of heavy names, history, and themes, and at times the forced relationships and political dalliances weigh down what should be a more fluid sexy romance fraught with danger. I’m not sure how much the average reader will care about Blaise’s hero Lenard the Great, or Ganir’s invention of Life Captures; most readers will be flipping pages for a bare chested bar brawl between two hotties, or a steamy courtyard romp with women wearing diaphanous gowns and men in leather armor. Much of the footwork in Sorcery Code is to set up the world of future adventures, sexual liaisons, and backstabbing socio-geo-political revolutions.
Gala’s creation from the realm of pure magic is the real conflict of the novel. Blaise has created life. And she’s hot, and in more than one way. She’s innocent, sexy, smart, potentially dangerous, powerful, and close to Blaise, whose reclusive shunning of all things Council make him a misunderstood outcast to other sorcerer's around. It is his special relationship to magic personified makes him a suddenly powerful pawn. Blaise is now important.
Zales plunges Gala into a world of sensory overload, and the readers are along for a ride as she discovers the world and all the pain that comes from being a living being. In ends up in a wild fight in and outside the Coliseum, and along the way lies are told, flesh is paraded, and lots of magical odds and ends combine to what makes up for an entertaining escape.
Zales is detailed, and so is the world he creates, much of heavy handed and serious, but Zales’s strength lies in the soap opera machinations laid out here. Essentially a young girl, Gala relationship with Blaise takes on mentor mentee/May December romance traits, while Augusta’s affair with the sneaky and aggressive Barson is a typical bare chested sexual tug of war between fiery physical specimens. Zales may have set up enough backstory to launch future volumes right into action, or perhaps there’s more world building to come in a series that is sure to entertain urban fantasy readers. Three stars.
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