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Reviews by Contributor: Steinmetz, Ferrett (3)

Back together now stitch by stitch

Fix  (Mancer, volume 3)

By Ferrett Steinmetz  

10 Nov, 2016

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2016’s Fix is the third and final (?) volume in Ferrett Steinmetz’ Mancer series. 

Paul Tsabo did his best to talk America into abandoning its draconian anti-’Mancer ways. Alas, Paul is a bureaucratomancer, not a oratoromancer, and his pleas fell on deaf ears. Persuasion having failed, Paul, his family, his friends and their allies dug in for a long campaign aimed at changing America’s mind. 

What Paul’s efforts do succeed at is convincing SMASH (the organization charged with protecting America from the Mancer menace) that their conventional methods for dealing with domestic threats isn’t going to work with Paul. SMASH is the sort of organization whose answer, when a hammer fails, is to get a much larger hammer. 

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Those school girl days

Flux  (Mancer, volume 2)

By Ferrett Steinmetz  

18 Oct, 2016

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2015’s The Flux is the second volume in Ferrett Steinmetz’s Mancer trilogy. 

Paul Tsabo has a remarkable talent for tracking down Mancers, the magic users whose talents make them Public Enemy Number One. That’s why he’s serving on New York City’s anti-’Mancer task force. True, lately his hit rate has been off a little, but that is not because he has lost his edge. It’s because he lost his enthusiasm for hunting Mancers when he realized that he himself is a Mancer.

As is his beloved daughter Aliyah. 

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Journey of the Sorcerer

Flex  (Mancer, volume 1)

By Ferrett Steinmetz  

11 Oct, 2016

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Ferrett Steinmetz’ debut novel Flex is the first volume in his Mancer trilogy. 

The good news is that magic is so easy any idiot can try their hand at it. The bad news is that a lot of idiots do, which is why Europe is a howling wasteland of reality holes and why the authorities react to magical outbreaks with overwhelming force. 

Rewriting reality always comes at a cost … but it’s not just the Mancers who have to pay. Former cop turned investigator Paul Tsabo and his daughter Aliya survived a magically triggered gas-main explosion that left young Aliya horribly burned. Reconstructive surgery will cost a half million dollars 1, which insurance company Samaritan Mutual is loath to pay. 

Lucky for Aliya, her father is a bureaucrat par excellence. In fact, he is one of Samaritan’s own, using his obsession with paperwork to track down rogue Mancers. Less luckily for Aliya, obsession is the stuff of magic. Paul isn’t just a bureaucrat. He is a full-fledged bureaucromancer. Paul is afraid it might have been the backlash from his own magic that set off the gas main. 

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