Rise of the Catalyst – Honor Raconteur

The year is 1910. Magic is known to work, and technology is more gadget-oriented than was true in our history, but aside from that the milieu is hard to distinguish from our own 1910. (The book is classified as ‘steampunk’, but that element is minor enough that I wouldn’t have identified the book as steampunk on my own.) As we have magic, we also have magic gone bad. Arwen makes a good living fixing magic gone bad.

“Rise of the Catalyst” is very first-in-a-series. We are introduced to Arwen and her support team through a case: A museum bought a mask on the black market, and would dearly like it neutralized before the museum finishes collapsing. In this case, neutralizing consists of shielding the artifact so it can’t do any harm (the shielding attempts fail consistently), and laying the artifact to rest in a place where it will stop doing harm. (Most of the obstacles turn out to be obstreperous people.)

The characters are engaging. The story itself didn’t have a strong plot. I enjoyed it well enough, and will give the next book in this series a shot.