Disclosure: I’ve met the author as part of my role as the Municipal Liaison for the St. Louis NaNoWriMo region. I received the book as a free digital ARC via Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

THE ROGUE RETRIEVAL brings the magic of the stage together with magic of the world. Quinn is a stage magician about to get his big break in Vegas when he’s approached with a very strange job offer. The world of Alissia lies just on the other side of a portal, and a megacorporation has been studying it for over a decade. They need his help to recover one of their people who has gone rogue, because Quinn would be an unknown to the man gone missing. Oh, and magic exists in Alissia, so they need their own magician. But it’s not going to be easy, especially since impersonating a true magician carries a death sentence.

It’s fun to see the juxtaposition of illusions or sufficiently advanced science against true magic. Alissia is a well-developed world, and has many secrets, quite a few of which aren’t revealed, so there’s plenty left for other books in the series. I’m a sucker for magic, stage or actual, and I always want to know how it works–it doesn’t ruin the effect for me, so I would have liked to have known how Quinn does some of his more spectacular tricks that the R&D guys at the megacorp didn’t have a hand in developing (and I want to know how long they worked on that laser sword). Quinn finds something about himself in Alissia, which I would definitely like to know more about!

There’s good gender representation in this novel, which made me happy. The commander of the mission to retrieve the rogue is a woman, and the science officer is a female POC (huzzah!). It just goes to show you that diversity is possible in fantasy! It’s an unfortunate fact that most people’s default character design is a white male, so why not give readers a chance to change that setting?

I felt like the ending was a little rushed, with a great big aerial battle that I had a little trouble picturing in my mind. But the story wraps up nicely while leaving plenty of room for a sequel. Also, I would like some Valteroni Gold now.

This book started life as a NaNoWriMo novel, so it just goes to show you that actual published books DO come from this writing program. I better get writing on mine!