The Gambler Grimoire – B.R. Kingsolver

Savanna Robinson is a newly-hired professor of Apothecary Arts - a branch of the Arcane Arts. Her predecessor was murdered some months back. It was an unsolved murder. In fact, the police seem to have forgotten to solve it. (This turns out to have stemmed from incompetence, not from magical interference.) So Savanna sets out to solve it. The Gambler Grimoire is the McGuffin. Everyone wants it. The murdered man might have had it. Its links to the plot are wispy.

GG was a pleasant, lightweight read. It could have been better, but too much of the book went into setting up the milieu and the characters, and too little of the book went into telling a story. The murder mystery was lightweight as well. Clues were not so much discovered as dropped at the protagonist’s feet - sometimes with a splat. GG has the makings of an excellent book. The author could have written an excellent stand-alone book that cried for a sequel, and put less effort into laying the foundations for a series.

I’ll read the sequel, if it gets good reviews.