by E. Branden Hart

Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My short story, “Ghost Townies,” was also published in the Shades and Shadows anthology, from XChyler Publishing, along with R.M. Ridley’s short story, “Cost of Custody.”

Welcome to New Hades. A city so gritty you can feel it between your teeth and taste it in the back of your throat. A place where, through the mist, hidden against the dark silhouette of a dilapidated building, you see a pair of eyes staring back at you. It’s just a dog, right? Or is it…

In R.M. Ridley’s debut novel, Tomorrow Wendell, nothing is quite what it seems, danger lurks around every corner, and it is up to private investigator Jonathan Alvey to find the truth for his clients. Jonathan’s your typical hard-boiled PI: he drinks to quench the demons in his soul, his office has a very strict “Yes smoking” policy, and he’s got a past that hangs on his back like a snarling monkey. Oh, and he’s also a practitioner of magic. True magic. And his addiction to using it will kill him faster than the booze and cigarettes.

When Jonathan uses magic, he gets the kind of high that a heroin addict can only dream of. That’s called riding the White Dragon. But the withdrawal is worse than coming off a week-long cocaine binge, and that’s when you’re in the clutches of the Dragon Black.

And that’s all you need to know. Actually, you don’t even need to know that, because Ridley does a fantastic job of introducing the elements of his universe throughout the story. You never feel confused, or lost, and that is quite a feat when you are crafting a universe with rules so much different from our own.

The narrative follows a structure that will be familiar to most fans of the PI genre: we meet the PI; he meets his client, who has a difficult mystery to solve and may or may not be who he seems; the PI becomes emotionally invested in the case; puts his life on the line for it; and then we find out whether he comes out on top or sinks to the bottom once again. The thing about Tomorrow Wendell that’s so wonderful is how it makes this old structure fresh again by introducing a world full of magicians, creatures that go bump in the night, myths from the Old World and nightmares for the modern age.

Reading this book, it is very clear that Ridley is setting up for quite a series. Tomorrow Wendell is definitely just a toe in the waters of New Hades, and you can tell that Ridley is using the slow build instead of just throwing us into the deep end. And this is the way it should be with a series like this–the reader should feel like they’ve just scratched the surface and that there is much more to this character and his world, and that’s exactly how I felt at the end of the novel.

There are a few things I think could have helped improve this novel: two related to the writing, and one related to the story itself.

The first, and most striking thing, is that the paragraphs throughout the book were far too short. There were several pages that were made up almost entirely of one-sentence paragraphs, and this makes for a very disjointed reading experience. While I understand the desire to avoid large blocks of text on a page, it is unwise to do so just for the sake of it–if sentences belong together in a paragraph, you risk interrupting the narrative flow if you split them up just for aesthetic reasons.

The second, more subtle thing was the use of passive tense. Passive tense has its place in writing, and this review is probably riddled with it (see what I did there?). But in fiction, the use of passive tense should be limited, as its presence usually indicates that a sentence could be written more directly. I would advise all writers, during their revision process, to do a read where you focus only on finding passive constructions and deciding whether they are necessary or not. If unnecessary, fix them.

Neither of these things detracted from the story itself (although the choppy paragraphs got annoying on occasion). In fact, I loved the story, and genuinely cannot wait until the second book in the series comes out. My only beef with the story was the ending. As in most stories in this genre, there was a nice little twist in the last few pages, but it came very suddenly, and was over so quickly that you barely had time to reflect on it. I think a little more of a lead up and come down from the twist would have strengthened what was, otherwise, a great finale.

Tomorrow Wendell is the beginning of what is sure to be an epic fiction series. Ridley sets the stage for what could be the scene of epic battles to come between Jonathan and his many, many adversaries. Jonathan is a great anti-hero: behind his gruff façade is someone who truly cares about the people who depend on him. And in his line of work, that can be both an asset and a flaw. But his biggest flaw is also his greatest strength: his power with magic and his battle with addiction are the heart of this story, and I’m looking forward to seeing Alvey wrestle with the Dragon Black for many books to come.

Look for Tomorrow Wendell, from XChyler Publishing, on June 28 on Amazon in both paperback and e-book formats. 

E. Branden Hart is Executive Editor of EmptySinkPublishing.com. He lives and works in San Antonio. His fiction has been published in Toasted Cheese Literary Magazine, Calamities Press, Down in the Dirt Literary Magazine, and Shades and Shadows: A Paranormal Anthology, which is available on Kindle and in paperback by XChyler Publishing.