Nine of Wands

The King's Watch, Book 5

By: Mark Hayden

Narrated by: Ciaran Saward

Gold. Beautiful and Deadly.
And doubly deadly when you mix it with magick.

Conrad and Mina take a time-out from trouble in Spain. It’s their own little Garden of Eden, until a Tarot reader tells him that his troubles have barely begun.

Expelled from Paradise, Conrad and the team have to chase the trail of a new source of Alchemical Gold. A source that already has Dwarves, Gnomes, and human Mages at each other’s throats.

When the prize is gold, life is cheap, and nothing blinds like greed. Can Conrad keep his eyes open and see through the killing glare of gold?

When the Tarot says Nine of Wands, you know you’re in for a bumpy ride.

©2019 Mark Hayden and Paw Press (P)2021 Mark Hayden and Paw Press

Okay

The story itself is fine. Continuing the storyline, albeit grimmer and with less humor to lighten than previous. My big issue here is that the escalating references to events in stories not included in the main books results in feeling like one is listening to an infomercial in several sections. Since this series is the only portion of the overall world canon that are in audiobook form this means being adrift as characters from outside stories pop in leaving you feeling like you’ve missed a big chunk of content. Rivers of London has a similar canon with outside content, but it is handled much more gracefully in the main books themselves. Considering the escalating cast by this time, having more people showing up without a coherent back story to hook them into makes for some slogging. Still a fine story, but would be considerably shorter if all the outside references were removed. I have to wonder what his editor was thinking.