Book Review – Record of The Paladins – Book of Oliver by B.P. McCoppin

I’ve always enjoyed the kind of books where the hidden world is revealed to the few and they fight against the things that go bump in the night. Mix in some gunplay with Christianity and I’m pretty much right at home. What McCoppin does here is present characters within the trope who are actually likable and not ones to cause you to wonder why anyone would follow in the footsteps of the order or not wind up needing some serious psychiatric counseling.

The main character, Oliver, being plucked out of a dreary orphanage by his mentor and new father, Gerin, immediately gets the story rolling along with having probably one of the most heartful and amazing scenes in an early part of a book I’ve read in a while. The scene in the diner is one that told me that I was in the right book.

The unraveling of the story as we proceed in real-time mixed in with flashbacks to Oliver’s upbringing doesn’t slow down either story and both injections help break up the pacing without failing to resolve with an overused cliffhanger. The main current story packs a lot of action and it shows that demons are, well, actually demons and therefore the bad guys. The story takes a Catholic flair which goes to the adage of, “if you need rituals and exoticism, it needs to be Roman Catholic based”. The characters are generic Christian enough not to ruffle too many feathers except those whom wish feathers to be ruffled. The editing and the pacing follow the story well and the cyclical nature of the story adds a note of completion that many stories with a flashback don’t take advantage of enough.

A few notes of quibble is that once the reveal of the Paladins occurs there’s no real big overarching story or end goal presented and it seems to be a presentation of three missions that build up to that last third one. I don’t think there was enough storytelling that really focused on the depth and consequences of the current events. A lot of the why questions are left unasked or unanswered that pertain to the Paladin storyline but there is a perfect amount given to Oliver’s backstory even if the final portion is a bit too on the nose of “High Plains Drifter with an actual good guy”. Finally, the tank character of Roland talking only in Bible verses is a choice but not one really given a reason other than “oh, you really do that huh?” Yet, when conversing with a Russian woman in Russian that may or may not happen and it didn’t add much depth to the character other than treating him almost as a literal tank character.

All that to say, I really enjoyed the book and enjoyed the mentor/mentee as it presents an amazing father/son relationship using adoption of both physical means and spiritual means to weave through the story. The action is pretty intense and adult with weighted reality of you might not be able to save everyone when going up against the demonic world. I would definitely check out more from this series and more from the author. But seriously, that diner scene was perfect.