In the novel Brooklyn Knight, Professor Piers Knight and his newest intern Bridget Elkins find themselves battling the forces of evil in order to save the world. Things start innocently enough when a friend of Professor Knight’s discovers an ancient buried city and requests to view an artifact known as the Dream Stone, which is housed in the Brooklyn Museum. Things quickly become much more complicated as the Professor and Bridget Elkins attempt to figure out what is happening before things get worse.
Brooklyn Knight is meant to be a fast-paced urban fantasy, but characters like Bridget Elkins make it kind of difficult to enjoy. Bridget is, of course, stunningly beautiful, incredibly intelligent, kind, wonderful, and good. She’s seemingly perfect, which makes it a little bit harder to root for her when she’s faced with extenuating circumstances. She always takes everything in stride, waiting to break down until it won’t complicate things or make any situations worse. Professor Piers Knight isn’t much better. He’s devastatingly handsome, unfailingly charming, incredibly intelligent, and doesn’t have the first clue about the kind of effect he’ll have on the women around him. Oh, yes, and he’s a chivalrous magician as well. It makes for an exhausting catalog of wonderful traits that leaves the characters feeling more than a little forced and just a bit flat.
The book also suffers from some very clumsy and obvious attempts at foreshadowing that are supposed to build some suspense for the reader, but instead make the story even more predictable and make the tone of the last paragraph of each of the first few chapters sound much more like an old movie serial with a cliffhanger than a modern novel. The book is also peppered with awkward turns of phrase and clunky dialogue, along with incessant references to the color of Bridget’s hair (she’s a redhead).
Despite those issues, the book isn’t completely atrocious. In fact, if the reader can get through those first chapters and through to the last third of the book, they’ll find that the end of the book is actually very good. Once the plot really picks up and the author focuses more on what is happening, Brooklyn Knight becomes an engaging and fast-paced story with a very interesting magical system that does operate on rules that make good sense. The book becomes suspensful and exciting and shows that C.J. Henderson can write a great action fantasy story.
While I probably won’t read this particular book again, I would definitely try reading another novel by this author to see if the newer book is more like the end of this book. If you don’t mind paranormal romance, you might enjoy this book more than I did. The body count does get a little high towards the end, but the descriptions aren’t the kind of graphic depictions that will make a person’s stomach turn. Henderson does a very good job of allowing the reader’s mind to fill in as much or as little of the gory details as they might want. Overall, once the first chapters were done, it became a quick and pleasant read.
