The North Valley Grimoire

By: Blake Northcott

Narrated by: Linnea Sage

Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Magick is leaking into our world, and an oppressive government will stop at nothing to keep it a secret.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Craft, and 007 collide in an all new, magical spy thriller from Blake Northcott, the international best-selling author of Arena Mode. The North Valley Grimoire is Kickstarter's number one most funded and most backed novel of 2018.

Warrantless searches. Illegal surveillance. Prisoners locked in indefinite detention. It's all in the name of national security, or so we’re told. While the government expands its power behind a veil of secrecy, a complicit media remains silent.

As the world continues to spiral, it’s business as usual in North Valley - a sleepy suburb known for little more than golf courses and overpriced real estate - until a series of murders casts a shadow over the town.

When Calista Scott investigates the death of her classmate, she uncovers a secret the government has been protecting all along: Magick is real. It's the most dangerous weapon in existence. And the grimoire her classmate left behind is the equivalent of a loose nuke.

“I love this book. Northcott has seamlessly shifted genres and proven she’s as masterful in magic and fantasy as she was in superheroes. Don’t pick this up unless you’re prepared to not put it down.” (Mark Millar, author of Kick-Ass, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Marvel's Civil War)

"There is world-building going on all throughout fiction these days - and then there is Northcott taking it to another level. Telling the story of a magical conspiracy through the lens of teen adventure, The North Valley Grimoire is what would happen if James Patterson and J.K. Rowling had a baby and it grew up to be a best seller." (Scott Lobdell, author of Happy Death Day, Uncanny X-Men)

©2018 Elissa Dyer (P)2018 Elissa Dyer

Wonderful!

Absolutely loved this. The narrator did an amazing job and the story was wonderful and kept you from wanting to put the book away. Cannot wait for the future of this series!

greeting from imgur :)

great story with a lot of promise for a amazing series. keep it up Blake!

Buffy as a mage vs James Bond & the US Government

This isn't a chosen one story, it's a teenaged girl who happened to be in the right place and time for all these things to happen to her, but could have happened to any of her friends or family if things were slightly different. There's no dark lord, magical educational institute, or even wands, just people who have magical abilities when they draw the right symbols and say the right words & the only way to learn is via trial and error. The darkest forces seen are mostly just people being horrible to one another, all the mystical creatures are only temporary manifestations of their summoner's magic and the closest thing to dark magic is using blood instead of relying on etchings, ink and/or paint.

The characters are varied but don't feel out of place in the primary location, the fictional North Valley, a place designed to house the day to day workers of the US intelligence community. The main character and the PoV fro most of the book is of Calista Scott, a former "it girl" who hung out with the clique of vapid popular girls until her mother was arrested. She's now considered the "weird" girl after he mom was arrested for what is claimed to be a Snowden/Manning-style leak. Calista's dialogue is written as the angry teenaged girl she is and the vocal preformance nails that, along with a few other characters of varying infections including an impressive brogue (at least to me).

The only things that hold it back is Calista is a teenaged girl and if you don't like how teenaged girls act when they have crushes or hold grudges, you may not like Calista or the story as a whole as sometimes you're detoured into her crushing on someone guy or momentarily ranting about some girl she use to he be friends with . There are also a few minor moments of plot dump where they explain the history of their worlds magic and why people didn't know. And of course the classic "this really cool character you only hear about? Yeah, they're really x". This isn't too bad though just something you should know as you listen/read.

I give it a 8.75/10 personally, it leaves the stage open for more, which I hear is upcoming and sets up an interesting world where the magic will ony get more wild.