Review: Strange Cargo By Patrick Samphire

Blurb:

What do a smuggling gang, a curse that won't go away, and a frequently lost dog have to do with each other?

Answer: they're all here to disrupt Mennik Thorn's hard-earned peace and quiet.

As the sole freelance mage in the city of Agatos, Mennik is used to some odd clients and awful jobs. But this time, one of his clients isn't giving him a choice. Mennik might have forgotten about the smugglers whose operations he disrupted, but they haven't forgotten about him. Now he is faced with a simple ultimatum: help them smuggle in an unknown, dangerous cargo or flee the city he loves forever.

Time is running out for Mennik to find an answer, and things are about to get completely out of control.

Note: this is a short novel, not a full-length novel.

Review:

 This was a relatively smaller book but just as fun as the past ones in the series. It connects a few tangents that were left unconcluded in the Nectar for the God (which I reviewed before), and paves the way for a new plot direction in the next book. 

This is also the book where I began to realize that this series will likely not follow an arc similar to other popular progression fantasies. Not complaining, it is just nice to have your assumptions invalidated every once in a while.

The city of Agatos, and its inhabitants, continue to surprise us in its bizarre ways. Given the city’s rich and colorful history, magic lurks in every corner, as do the vagabonds keen to take advantage of it. Some are happy with being called thieves and smugglers, others mask themselves behind titles of revered priests and high mages. 

‘Agatos was an honest city. Not honest as in, wouldn’t lie, cheat, steal, or murder. But honest as in, if someone wanted something enough, someone else would sell it to them.’

What distinguishes our likeable protagonist in this chaotic crowd of whimsical characters, is that though he may not be powerful, or wealthy, he does have a moral compass that points north - most of the time. And he is anything if not resourceful. And he can’t look away from an intriguing case, even if the victim is the grouchy barman who has never treated him well.

‘So much for self-control. So much for learning my lesson. A quick look can’t hurt. That was going to be my epitaph.’

In Mennik Thorn’s life, every choice has consequences. The brave ones, the reckless ones, the misguided ones… the distinction between them all is increasingly blurry. And this book is no different. Nik has pissed off a gang of vicious smugglers, and they aren’t in the mood to move on.

‘Any plan that relied on everything going according to plan was a plan that was going to go wrong.’

And indeed it did. Besides the eponymous mysterious artifact which Nik is being coerced into protecting, there were quite a few other fun elements. A strange magical parasite was something I totally didn’t see coming, and neither did I anticipate his barman nemesis Dumonoc getting entangled into the storyline so prominently. But seriously, that guy deserved it all.

Besides bizarre cases, we also get some glimpses of the shady religious organizations of Agatos revealing their true colors. And more creative applications of Nik’s increasingly renowned signature spell, colorfully named as fucksthat - you know because it makes people get up and ask “What the fuck’s that?” Couldn’t have found a better name myself.

Nik had a rule not getting involved with religion. If I have come to expect one thing from Patrick’s writing so far, it’s that all rules come with expiration dates. And this one too was no exception, and in this iteration of Mennik Thorn’s adventures we see another one of his self-imposed restrictions go up in flames.

My only complaint with this book was that we don’t see as much of Sereh. For such a fascinating character, I do wish she received more ‘screen time’. 

As before, the ending of this book just made me go running to the next book. But more on that in a future post.