Wild Court by Matthew Samuels

Today is my stop on the Escapist Book Co blog tour for Matthew Samuels’s Wild Court. This is an urban fantasy that deals with the paranormal. Thank you to Escapist Book Co and Matthew Samuels for allowing me to participate in this blog tour.

I received this book for free from Author to facilitate my review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A secret organisation is losing the battle to maintain the empathy levels that sustain our planet’s barriers against the nightmare worlds.

Meanwhile, a young aristocrat safeguards a terrible secret, sponsoring an archaeology graduate obsessed with biblical artefacts. An all-knowing orphan worshiped by a cult joins a textbook exemplar of toxic masculinity and an introverted librarian. Together with a retired demon hunter, they’ll face the apocalypse.

Content Warnings: Frequent swearing, sexism, blasphemy, casual sex, binge drinking, speculative and unconventional biblical interpretations, toxic masculinity, frank references to masturbation, urination, farting, fouling ones clothes, anxiety, feelings of disorientation, panic and claustrophobia, public vomiting, horrific human transformations, people being killed, magic, air travel, fantastical monsters, portrayals of angels, blood, urine, faeces, vomit, aggressive interrogation of Christian doctrine and that of other Abrahamic religions, guns, flippancy about the egos of divine beings, misogynistic language, references to drug use, mugging, falling down stairs, nails being dragged down a blackboard

Trigger Warnings: Gore, gratuitous violence, bleeding from the eyes, ears, anus and mouth, exploding / harm to animals, tattooing / needles, contemplation of suicide, supernatural creatures killing and eating humans, murder, dead bodies, mutilation, torture, car crashes, people being shot, graphic injury detail, shooting and gun fights, references to human trafficking, injury and unpleasant deaths, brief references to the 9/11 and 7th July terrorist attacks, references to cruelty to animals and animal sacrifice

When I first read the description for Wild Court, I was intrigued. I’m not usually one for urban fantasy novels, but I wanted to give it a try. I’m so glad I did.

Wild Court has a unique spin on urban fantasy. It’s paranormal fantasy and it is done in a way that I haven’t really seen before. There is a slow build up to the full issue, but once the full issue is at hand, the book moves pretty quickly. Honestly, the slow build up is rather nice – it keeps the book from feeling rushed.

I liked the characters – most of them at least, although I must say I wasn’t overly fond of Alice. It wasn’t that she was a bad character and she certainly wasn’t evil, she just had that obnoxious know-it-all air about her that annoyed me. Other than that, I was quite satisfied with the characters. I knew who to root for, who I should absolutely despise, and who was in neutral territory. All in all, great characters.

The writing style is easy to read. There are some things it took me a bit to figure out – since I’m in the US, I didn’t know that people in the UK call McDonald’s “Macca’s” and I was thrown off until I looked it up on Google. But other than a few terms that weren’t familiar as they are UK lingo, I was able to read through the book quite quickly. There aren’t any grammar or editing errors that I noticed.

The ending might seem anticlimactic or even rushed to some, but I don’t think it was. I feel like the ending moved at exactly the pace it was supposed to. There was a part of the ending that made me think “seriously dude?” but that was due to something a character did not anything bad about the ending. I gave this book a solid four stars as it is a great, fun read.

About Matthew Samuels

I’m Matthew Samuels, a science fiction and fantasy writer based in London, UK. I’m the author of the Sci-Fi Hopepunk adventure books Parasites and Dusk, the first two books in the Navigator Series, and urban fantasy title, Small Places. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, gaming, running, walking, EDM, and oddly, also quiet.

Website | Twitter | Instagram