Book Review – Record of The Paladins – Book of Ivon and Ivoire by BP McCoppin

Having really enjoyed the writing prose and the story set up by McCoppin in his first book, I was more than happy to have a second book in the series to read. Picking up on all the main story points for the first one, this shifts the focus more away from Oliver to the new potential Paladins – Ivon and Ivoire. This was actually a little bit sad to me, but only because McCoppin did such a great job of endearing Oliver to me but I can’t fault him for writing one story too well.

While two new characters are introduced, it is more Ivoire who is the lead character and she has only a semi-tragic backstory as opposed to Ivon who becomes a sort of villian doing evil and villianous things. Ivoire who follows the tropes of an Eastern European spy (for Ukraine) teams up with the Paladin Corps. just under halfway through the book. Enough of her story is fleshed out to make you care about her as a character and understand her power and skills she will bring to the table. Sadly, there was no “diner scene” to emotionally wreck me (in a good way) like in the first book but different experiences may be had by different readers. Ivon’s story is also followed although more sporadically and there’s just not enough good to be eeked out of his character to want me to root for him to be included among the Paladins. Now, this may make for a good plot point and the author does have the characters discuss Paladins who come in as atheists.

A little more lost this time is the overall plot. The evil senator, who knew politicians are literally demons, rears her ugly head again and there’s a few mini-missions that are resolved quite quickly. A few more lore points are added to the world-building. A priest who is essentially the angry police lieutenant that’s going to shut down the program that’s known to be working shows up for a mission and is quickly turned around. Finally, the ending moves from the the Ivon, Ivoire storylines to the revelation very quickly. It’s not that it’s not earned, it just turns the tide very quickly although there is a question asked that lends to, for me, a funny outcome but to some readers they might be confused why a character in the story would ask the question. The final revelation that lends itself to the next book had me saying, “she’s going after BOTH things, oh no she didn’t”.

While Book of Oliver for me was an amazing read, I had to try and be fair and not let all my good feelings towards that cloud my reading of this book (for both good and bad). The focus away from Oliver is really hard to get through and I have a feeling that adding more characters with the same type of storytelling might lead to too many character and too often treading on the recruitment of “broken” characters. I’m also still not a big fan of Roland as an impervious tank of a man nor his speech (not that I don’t love people quoting Scripture a lot, I’m just not sold on the logic of doing so in battle). Even still, I enjoyed the story and McCoppin’s writing. He understands the world has both elements of good and evil and some people can be demonically influenced and also just be evil people all on their own. I will be happy in continuing this story and other writings from this author.