Nerds That Geek Book Review - "Sleight of Hand: Book Three: The Weir Chronicles"

​Written by John Edward Betancourt

I've always loved the magical feeling that comes with discovering a top notch brand new book. You're introduced to a new world, with exciting new people and plenty of new places to go in your mind and truly, it's an experience like no other. It's the thrill of that feeling that forces me to pour through every sample chapter that I can on Amazon or peruse a few pages at Barnes and Noble so I can find that one special book that ignites the wonder within.

In order for a story to do that for me, the writing has to immediately draw me in and sometimes that means the search for a new book or new book series takes me a little longer as I work to find that story that can hook me immediately. But when I find one that catches my eye, I am truly all in, and recently I finally found a novel that managed to meet all of my criteria and leave me hanging for more with author Sue Duff's latest work; Sleight of Hand: Book Three: The Weir Chronicles.

Now normally, when I discover that an author has a series planned or completed for their story, I try my best to start at the beginning so I properly set the stage in my mind, but the opening words of Sleight of Hand were so compelling, I dove right into the third book in the series and quickly discovered I couldn't put it down, because the entire plot is downright fascinating. Nothing is quite what it seems in this book. What seems like a race against time to save Ian's life when he poisoned by the rebellious Jaered turns out to be an epic for the ages as people uncover long lost truths as the story sets in motion a grand plan to save all of mankind from destruction. 

Now I won't say much else on the plot because it's woven so intricately by Sue that telling you much more will mean that I have to ruin it, and quite frankly you need to read this book because it is an absolute gem, and that's because of how incredible a job Sue does in weaving this fantastic saga. She has built a majestic world filled with a combination of science and magic and it's done in such smooth fashion that you never question it for a second. This is the world that Ian and his friends populate and that's the other part about this book that I thoroughly enjoyed, the fact that the characters jump off the page and you care about them and their cause...well, at least when it comes to the good guys. 

In the end, Sleight of Hand was a fantastic initiation to Ian's world of Weir and this is the first time that I am thankful that I started in the middle of the story, simply because the mark of a great writer, is that they can draw you in at any time in any fashion with the power of their words and Sue Duff has done just that and while the logical thing to do next is to beg Sue for the next entry in the series to come out sooner than 2017, I will do no such thing. I want her to make sure the fourth entry is as wonderful as this one and because I have Books One and Two to go through while I wait to see what happens in Ian's world next.

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