The Spell of the Black Dagger, Lawrence Watt-Evans
I like mysteries. There's just not enough of them in fantasy. I try to get my fix by reading those books about nuns and monks solving mysteries in medieval England, but they just aren't enough for me. The Spell of the Black Dagger would have been more effective if it had been written as a mystery with fantastic content than as a fantasy with a mystery in it.
The book starts out pretty well: Tabaea, a thief, attempts to burgle a wizard's house. She sees the wizard teaching his apprentice some basic spells, including one to create a magical knife, one of the tools of the wizard's trade. She tries it also, but it goes wrong and appears not to do anything magical with the knife. Only by accident are the true powers of the tool discovered. At the same time, Sarai, the daughter of Ethshar's minister of justice, is learning his trade hands-on both as a judge and as an investigator. She is called to investigate some very mysterious murders of magic-workers. Who is committing these crimes and why?
The characterization in this book is effective to a point. The roles of protagonist and antagonist switch several times through the course of the plot , and this proves effective. Not knowing who the enemy really is (or how many there are) throws the reader off and adds a little suspense.
If this novel has any drawbacks, it would be in the prevalence of magic-users in the city. The reader sees little of the other trades, but is given a hint of how their guild structure works. I like it when an author thinks about such things. Unfortunately, too many novelists use the same structure, more or less.
The pros of this book outweigh the cons, but The Spell of the Black Dagger was a bit too generic for my taste. It was good on one reading, but I doubt I'll read it a second time. I don't know if I'll try any of Watt-Evans' other novels, unless I'm on a beach somewhere, or in the middle of finals week.