William Ray reviewed Moonshine by Jasmine Gower
Review of 'Moonshine' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A roaring '20s style misadventure centered around an adventurous young career girl who joins a gang of mana hustlers during magical prohibition; I feel like I may have been specifically targeted for this one! Overall, it's a compelling and unique setting, full of fun ideas and a strong story about politics and repression, with interesting characters and intriguing mysticism. It's well worth the read.
It's a compelling fantasy world of diverse magic, where magicians have been forced into hiding by an uneasy populace, much akin to the world of speakeasys and bootleggers in the US during Prohibition. In many ways, Moonshine feels like an intimate side-story in a setting we're expected to be familiar with already. The narrative avoids fantasy's common pitfalls of over-the-top stakes, and instead focuses on the plight of a compelling protagonist and her friends, struggling against a politically hostile non-magic majority as it turns increasingly violent. …
A roaring '20s style misadventure centered around an adventurous young career girl who joins a gang of mana hustlers during magical prohibition; I feel like I may have been specifically targeted for this one! Overall, it's a compelling and unique setting, full of fun ideas and a strong story about politics and repression, with interesting characters and intriguing mysticism. It's well worth the read.
It's a compelling fantasy world of diverse magic, where magicians have been forced into hiding by an uneasy populace, much akin to the world of speakeasys and bootleggers in the US during Prohibition. In many ways, Moonshine feels like an intimate side-story in a setting we're expected to be familiar with already. The narrative avoids fantasy's common pitfalls of over-the-top stakes, and instead focuses on the plight of a compelling protagonist and her friends, struggling against a politically hostile non-magic majority as it turns increasingly violent.
The biggest downside was that I really wanted more of its setting; the over-sized ogres work technology, and favor exposed gears, the various other nations are at war, or recently were, the city itself abuts an active volcano that constantly spews ash... there's so much fascinating detail, and by the end I still wanted to see more of it. The clubs visited, the farms on the outskirts, the desolated countryside in recovery, they all left me intrigued, but not entirely satisfied I had seen as much as I'd like to.
That I rate this less than five stars is entirely a matter of my personal tastes showing through; we easily see enough of the world to understand all the action taking place, and the characters interacting in it. My hunger for more should be read as a great testament to the author's imagination in the setting, but the sliver between four and five for me here is that as a reader I'd have loved to see the setting highlighted with a bit more tourism. For example, the diversity among the hero's acquaintance was featured, but it would have been nice to have a clearer idea of to what degree that was natural to everyone in this world, or if it represented a camaraderie encouraged by their shared clandestine association to overcome traditional social barriers. We get the sense such things may exist, but we don't see enough of the everyday world to be sure where the lines usually are, exactly.
Within a unique setting, it's always an awkward balance between overwhelming the audience with details of the alien world and leaving them confused with a dearth of information. Here, I wanted just a bit more. Everything feels right in context, but for me in particular, I suppose I just love an excess of context, and so while the story had everything I needed, it had slightly less than I wanted.
