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  • Crimes Against Magic

  • The Hellequin Chronicles, Book 1
  • By: Steve McHugh
  • Narrated by: James Langton
  • Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (672 ratings)
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Crimes Against Magic cover art

Crimes Against Magic

By: Steve McHugh
Narrated by: James Langton
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Summary

How do you keep the people you care about safe from enemies you can’t remember? Ten years ago, Nate Garrett awoke on a cold warehouse floor with no memory of his past and the only clues to his identity were a piece of paper with his name on it and a propensity toward magic. Now he’s a powerful sorcerer and a successful thief for hire, but it turns out that those who stole his memories aren’t done with him yet. When they cause a job to go bad, threatening a sixteen-year-old girl, Nate swears to protect her. But with his enemies closing in and the barrier holding back his memories beginning to crumble, Nate is forced to confront his forgotten life in the hope of stopping an enemy he can’t remember. Crimes Against Magic is a dark, fast-paced urban fantasy torn between modern-day London and fifteenth-century France.

©2013 Steve McHugh (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Crimes Against Magic

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Crimes against literature

Disappointment is my new official pastime, I download a book get thrilled by the premise and disappointed by the delivery of the author.

There are a few things that "narked" me off about this book. The first that I will mention (but not the worst) is the poor use of swearing. Well thought out and judicious use of swear words in a book can elevate it, appropriately increasing tension, comedy, realism or overall entertainment of the story. I found the swearing in this book to be ill conceived, overused, offensive, and lacking in purpose.

Secondly, the author has fallen into the common trap of new authors telling a first person story from the point of view of a shallow and unlikeable character. As a reader I thought the lead character was a thoroughly unpleasant thug that the writer tried to cast in a better light by putting him up against even worse characters. As if to say "hey look, I'm not a serial killing baby-eater therefore I must be good person"!

Thirdly, the character is a womaniser, and unpleasantly so. I just didn't like that. Again, the author tries to play it off as if he is somehow the good guy in all of this. But he's a jerk and as the story unfolded, my dislike for him increased.

Fourth, but of course not in order of importance, this author cannot write dialogue. "I said", "he said", "she said", no sense of connection with the characters. The quality of the dialogue is poor. Abjectly so.

Fifth no sense of being engrossed in the story or in the realism of the events or characters. I felt that the hero was overpowered and it was too easy for him to regain his memories. Because the hero was too overpowered, the bad guys were simply ridiculous and though the story had a high tempo in that lots of things happened at high speed I simply didn't care.

Sixth over the top. Simply being able to imagine acts of extreme violence, sex, etc doesn't mean that you can have the desired effect on your reader. The author is unable to connect the extreme nature of event or environment with the reader in a way that they should care. I see this a lot in modern films and books and it makes me laugh because of the amateurish nature of the delivery. ANYONE can conceive of extreme things, especially nowadays when the news brings such events to our ears daily, hourly or even more frequently. The author has to make it MATTER to the reader or else it is slapstick or just tasteless.

There was also something about the narrator I just did not connect with, I felt he was somewhat dislocated from the story. However I will underline that the story was not poor because the narrator was poor, the story was poor because the author was inadequate to the task.

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55 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Badly written, badly performed

This book reads like a juvenile fantasy and much of the dialogue I found cringeworthy or just bad - "He was kneeling on the floor, his hands a raw mess of boiled skin and flesh. They'd been against the edge of the sphere he'd created. 'You've crippled me!' he shrieked" is from late in the book. There's also the occasional part where the full manufacturer's name for a weapon is given ("an Accuracy International Arctic Warfare AWS Covert") which just reads like the author thought the guns were SO COOL (or made the character so cool) that they needed to be named in full, even if it doesn't mean anything to the reader. The dialogue wasn't helped by the reading style of the narrator, elongating odd syllables and having a weird cadence and strange choice of tones for dialogue compared to what is described in the text.

The main character is also the definition of a Marty-Stu - all the women want him, all the men want to be him or kill him. The only women he doesn't sleep with almost on first sight are either in an abusive relationship or too busy murdering people; He easily beats or kills anyone he faces in combat and if the bad guys have the temerity to capture him, the main character is surer to be saved by deus ex machina than through any struggle on his part.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • T
  • 05-05-16

Missing something the Dresden Files had.

Enjoyed it esp the references to mythology and some of the baddies but lacked the humour and depth books like the Dresden Files or Nightside (Simon R Green) books have.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

I worry about this author...

While the idea behind this universe is interesting, and the main character is slightly off-centre, there are certain parts of the story that make me think that the author is a little bit desperate...

The fact that women seem to fall at his feet, all he as to do is look at them and their knickers fall to the floor, it's almost like the author is so sexually frustrated that he can't write porn (or 50 Shades), so has his main character have every woman fall in love with him as soon as they look at him, this includes a 16 year old teenager, a redhead he meets outside a building (who says she wants to go slowly and then immediately sleeps with him), and a mob boss' daughter!

While the overall scenario of the book is interesting, although I had to roll my eyes a few times, but I like the way we get flashbacks to show how he got to know certain things & people, especially the way they "slow burn" so it takes a while to make sense of the flashback

Overall, the idea is good, although the whole concept of the main character being a "superman" who is the most desirable man ever seems a little stretched

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Soooo good!

I love the story! I love the characters. I love the reader! Unexpected stuff happened. I love the idea about living through the centuries, I listened to this one and immediately bought the second one, which is as good! Waiting for the next book...

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

No sex please we're British!

If you could sum up Crimes Against Magic in three words, what would they be?

Great fast story

What other book might you compare Crimes Against Magic to, and why?

Dresden files and Alex Veras novels

What about James Langton’s performance did you like?

Well read, good emotive voice

Any additional comments?

Great book, just a few sex scenes which seemed ill placed.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Completely immersed!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book is a fantastic mix of supernatural beings. Utterly believe able and a joy to listen too. As soon as I finished this book I was completely hooked and so went on to buy book two and three of the trilogy.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Crimes Against Magic?

I particularly enjoyed how the book wove together a take of the present and the past -1400's.

Have you listened to any of James Langton’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No I haven't but I really enjoyed his narration and will certainly be searching for more in the future.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

This isn't really a story that moved me but certainly had me hooked from the very beginning.

Any additional comments?

Absolutely fantastic book and would highly recommend.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Could be better. struggled to finish.

Struggled to finish listening. The narration is so hard to listen too. The story is a mixed up mess dissapointed.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Couldn't get past the narrator. ...

Regretfully I couldn't get into this due to a pathological reaction to robotic tone of the narrator.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Average

I really thought I'd enjoy this and go on to buy the rest in the series. It just didn't happen. I'm not entirely sure what was wrong with it but I lost interest as I listened and I gave up an hour or so before the end. I had no interest whatsoever in getting to the end...complete apathy won over.

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5 people found this helpful