Circleborn

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

At first glance, Lor Haase's "Circleborn" - the first book in his "Soloman's Circle" trilogy - may sound a bit reminiscent of the "Secret Circle" series (at least the TV version - I've not read the books) in that it features a group of families bound together by magic and the magic is passed from one generation to the next.  That's where the similarity ends, however. 

In Hasse's story, each family wields a different type of magic, and types gain their power from different sources. The circle is structured in an intricate hierarchy based on how much power a certain type of magic has and the order in which power can be shared between circle members.

 I found the book to be quite enjoyable. He sets up the main conflict nicely, and the characters are likable. The book is fairly short and makes for a quick read, but it's full of action, making it a lot of fun.  It's a dark story, though - a couple passages left me pleasantly creeped-out.

There are a couple things that bothered me a bit, which is why I gave it 3 stars. The first is that there are quite a number of typos throughout the book, and while they're not so serious as to make any part of the book difficult to understand, they did slow down the flow of reading and had a tendency to pull me out of the story for a moment.  

The other is that for much of the first half of the book, Hasse has the characters drop a lot of hints and clues about different story elements by having their thoughts and conversations referencing an unspoken common context without letting the reader know exactly what that context is. This is a tactic many books use to build suspense - and it's very effective in doing so - but usually it doesn't seem to take quite as long for the author to reveal the secret to the audience, and it usually only involves a couple characters.  Here, Hasse suspends information from at least 5 different characters, and there were times I found myself flipping back a few pages to refresh my memory on what I'd learned so far. 

That said, I do recommend "Circleborn" for lovers of urban fantasy. There are a lot of surprises in the book, and Hasse has some interesting ideas in play. I found the power-sharing idea intriguing, and really liked the power-learning technique he devised for one character, among many other things, and I'm really looking forward to reading the next installment.