The Midnight Front

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I am a pretty easy grader. If I enjoy something, if I can lose myself in it for the period I'm reading it, if it induces me to think about the setting or characters, then I am a soft touch for a “five-star” rating.

This book met those criteria. It was a page-turner that took us from setting up through conflicts to resolution and planted the seeds of a second story without leaving us hanging.

The storyline introduces Cade Martin on the eve of World War II. Cade is an American at Oxford, returning to the US with his parents to avoid the war. Their ship - the Athena - is sunk and his parents are killed by a Kraken. The next thing we know is Cade is recruited into a super-secret fraternity of sorcerers. In author David Mack's universe, all “magick” is performed by “yoking” demons. The demons perform because of rituals that involve mortgaging the soul of the adept (“Karcist”) for future damnation.

Naturally, Cade is the “chosen one” and masters the system quickly, which is good because World War II is clicking along and the Nazis have their own Karcists working for them. The ending of the book resolves itself through missions involving Point du Hoc and the Firebombing of Dresden.

The characters are fairly two dimensional with simple motivation. The magic system seems like it would make a good card game where players would select no more than ten demons to yoke and battle each other, e.g., The flaming scimitars of BARTISON against the invisible cloak of GORGONEX. (Honestly, this got tedious and laughable at some points, but I could see the attraction for the YA readers.)

A nit I had to pick was the “cosmological reveal” where we find out that humans don't get to go to Heaven or Hell. This seemed to take away the existential conundrum of trafficking with demons. I felt that this was almost a requirement for modern urban fantasy, i.e., obviously, no one believes in that religion nonsense in a world where there are actual demons. Disappointing, actually.

The end of the book leaves us with the burgeoning Cold War as the Allies and Soviet Union seem to be cooking up their own demon-yoking systems to go along with their nuclear weapons.

I don't know if I will read the sequel. That may be in the distant future, but I did enjoy this book