Review of The Devil Pulls the Strings

[Artemis Cyfrin]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Devil Pulls the Strings" by J. W. Zarek.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Myths. Music. Magic. All three are merged by J. W. Zarek to create The Devil Pulls The Strings. Boone only planned to win his friend, Flynn, at the Ren Faire joust. After an incident at the joust which left Flynn injured, Boone had to fill in for his friend at a Saturday gig in New York City. He never knew he would be thrusted into a world of magic and otherworldly creatures. And it all started with a dead body.

Together with Sapphire, a violinist he met in New York, Boone has to gather three sheets of Paganini music and stop a calamity from unfolding, and New York is at stake. Join Boone and Sapphire in this intense race against time and other parties to stop evil. A tale involving suspense, time travel, mysteries, and secret societies. You don't want to miss this.

Zarek did a good job of crafting a thrilling tale out of the mythic beliefs about Paganini. The book was a mix of reality and fantasy. I even learned about Musical Kinesthetic Synesthesia, a condition where you are able to copy someone you saw and/ or heard playing a song. The setting was vivid, making me visualize everything like I was right there. He implemented good worldbuilding, which I love seeing in books. Zarek also created original and realistic characters. For example, Boone never lived in the city and was not highly educated. This was proven when some things were unfamiliar to him and he did not understand some terms he heard. Music plays an important role in the story, like when Boone had to sing to pay his taxi fare.

Some of the sentences in the story appear incomplete. Though this might be Zarek's style of writing, it disrupted the flow of the story for me till I got accustomed to it. Other readers might not tolerate this. There were also a number of errors which a reader might not notice.

I rate The Devil Pulls The Strings 4 out of 4 stars. Despite the minor defaults stated above, the book still worth reading with a nice plot filled with suspense and action, and well thought out worldbuilding. This book will make a great read for lovers of action-packed urban fantasy.

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The Devil Pulls the Strings
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