Book Review: Roderick Blackwood and the Demon Stone by Ralph Rathbone

It’s Tuesday again folks… Today’s book review is a fantasy novella – Roderick Blackwood & The Demon Stone – by screenwriter-turned-author Ralph Rathbone. My review copy was provided courtesy of the author.

When I was asked to review this book, I was eager to see what it would look like. The cover is very cool, and a screenwriter author sounded promising – I expected action and solid pacing, particularly in a novella (a screenplay-ish length literary work). The blurb from the author had potential, even though it was a topic that has been done by a few people in the post-Harry Potter publishing world: “When upstart magician Roderick Blackwood puts on a show of his magical abilities for his friend, he attracts the attention of a demon who wears a pin-striped suit, named Belzial. Belzial forces him to go on a quest for a magical stone which was stolen by a rogue sorcerer.” I’m also extra interested in novellas lately, given my own writing experiences. So I said I’d give it a whirl.

I’m sorry to report that I was less than enamored with this one. Really, I am. I hate having to report that I didn’t love a book, particularly when the author is nice and friendly. Also particularly because I know how difficult it is to get a book finished (and can only imagine how difficult it is to get said book out into the hands of the right reviewers for his/her intended audience). Unfortunately, sometimes a book and a reader just don’t click, and for me, this was one of those times. (I’ve had a couple of them lately, hence all the explanation here.)

The main character, Roderick Blackwood, is not particularly endearing. That’s okay – I can deal with that, particularly when there is an interesting supporting character, as was the case here. Clarice was the most interesting character by far for me. Pulled, unwittingly, into Roderick’s mess, she carries herself with ladylike grace and aplomb despite the weird goings on around her. Unfortunately, she’s not one of the two main characters, so she didn’t have enough weight to carry the day given that I found Roderick rather smarmy for my tastes and Belzial a little stereotypical.

I must also confess that this book felt unfinished to me. There were typos, jumps in plot, and references that needed to be reread before I could follow them. The language often felt overly done and not altogether natural (even for a smarmy fellow like Roderick). I am willing to make the assumption that some of this was intended tongue-in-cheek, but even with that assumption in hand I found this one somewhat stilted.

There were bursts of clever buried in layers of convolution – don’t get me wrong. There are some very nice snarky, biting bits of conversation and, as I said earlier, Clarice was lovely. Still, it mostly felt like the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. There were times when it felt like a précis for a screenplay or longer novel, an adult version of Harry Potter, and/or a biting send-up of the fantasy genre. Sadly, as is all too often the case when a book tries to be many things, it ended up not entirely fulfilling the requirements of any one of them… Sorry Ralph, but this one just didn’t resonate with me.