An Instruction in Shadow: Goes down smoothly

An Instruction in Shadow by Benedict Jacka 

An Instruction in Shadow is Benedict Jacka’s follow up to An Inheritance of Magic, his tale of modern-day magic and family intrigue set in London. The main character remains likably engaging, the magic intriguing, the family history labyrinthine, and if the story doesn’t perhaps progress quite as much as one would prefer, it all results in a smoothly enjoyable read.

Stephen Oakwood is continuing to hone his “drucraft” while working at locating magical wells for a big drucraft company, a job that has gotten noticeably more dangerous as more and more wells are being jumped by raiders. Meanwhile, Stephen is still trying to figure out what happened to make his father suddenly vanish several years back, and now that his mother (who left him well before his father’s disappearance) is back, he’s hoping to finally get some answers. Unfortunately, she’s less than forthcoming, and so he’s forced to turn to his half-sister, well-ensconced in the aristocratic family he’s not allowed to be part of, to dig up anything she can find on his parents’ past. All of this —his job issues and subsequent desperate need for money along with his digging up the family’s past — leads to Stephen becoming reluctantly enmeshed with several groups: the well raiders, as he shifts sides from fighting them to being part of them; his family, as he gets hired as security by one of them; and a mysterious group known as the Winged, who are trying to recruit him to their agenda.

The strengths that have carried over from the first book are several. One is that Stephen remains, as noted above, a likable engaging character with a mostly (more on that later) winning voice and the sort of very relatable eking-out-a-living hardscrabble life that isn’t out and out poor but does have him constantly worrying about rent. Beyond making him relatable, it also allows for some pointed criticism of capitalism, which I’ll always applaud. I also like how he works at his craft with a mixture of intelligence, perseverance, curiosity, and trial and error. His relationship with his mysteriously useful cat Hobbes is as fun and chuckle-worthy as ever, and I also appreciated his tentative steps into a closer relationship with his half-sister, whom he calls Bridget (he doesn’t actually know her real name) because they met on, yes, a bridge. She is probably the best developed secondary character despite not a lot of page time, and I hope we see more of her in book three.

The magic is interesting if a bit convoluted at times, and where book one gave us a lot of background/worldbuilding, book two extends the details about the magic itself but also broadens our viewpoint of it as we see how the companies and economics of it work (well, sort of see it). Finally, in terms of strengths, the book is well paced and balanced between various types of scenes in terms of action, dialogue, fight scenes, character tensions, and more introspective moments.

On the other side of the ledger, as mentioned, there’s not a lot of plot movement by the end, whether we’re talking about finding out what happened with his father, more about his powerful and rich family, his relationship with his mother, or what the Winged are. The result is a book that feels like it’s spinning its wheels a bit too much. Worse, some of that feels forced, as with his mother’s dribbling out information or the lack of information on the Winged, so that it feels like the author is meddling to keep us ignorant rather than our ignorance being born more naturally out of plot and character. Somewhat on the flip side, we also sometimes get some clunky exposition where characters almost literally lecture about some key points of information. Character-wise, beyond Stephen, Bridget, and to some extent Stephen’s friend Colin and his cousin Calhoun (some extent because they lean more toward plot-points than fully fleshed out characters) the characterization is a bit thin and one-note. But while I would have preferred more depth to characters like his mother or the head of the Winged, at this point I’m willing to give Jaka the benefit of the doubt and hope that will happen in the ensuing books as we see more of them. And while we’re on the subject of the Winged, I’ll just note that I have a few ideas of where that is going, and I’m hoping it’s not as overt as I’m thinking. Lastly, while I find the magic system interesting, the logistics of it remain a bit shadowy and Stephen’s various abilities/non-abilities somewhat uneven depended on plot needs.

So yes, a flawed novel, but still, as mentioned above, a fast-paced, enjoyable read that went down smoothly and left me, if not panting for more, certainly interested to see where Stephen’s economic and familial plights take him.