Guild of Tokens
by
Jon Auerbach
Genre: Urban Fantasy (unconventional)
Publication: June 25, 2019
Age Group: Adult
SHE WANTS TO LEVEL UP HER HUMDRUM EXISTENCE. BUT HER NEXT QUEST COULD SPELL LIFE OR DEATH.
Jen Jacobs’s nights are spent traversing a strange city finding hidden objects, slaying dragons, and tangling with a host of fellow adventurers. And her days are spent counting down the seconds until she can return to the grind and continue racking up tokens and leveling up.
Except Jen isn’t playing a video game.
It’s all real and happening right in New York City.
After a particularly harrowing quest pairs her up with Beatrice Taylor, a no-nonsense and ambitious mentor, Jen hopes she’s on the path to becoming a big-time player. But as she dives deeper into the game’s hidden agenda, she realizes Beatrice has her sights set on the Guild, the centuries-old organization that runs the Questing game. And the quests Jen loves are about to put both of them in grave danger.
Will Jen survive the game before powerful forces cut her real life short?
Guild of Tokens is a thrilling new twist on conventional urban fantasy. If you like determined heroines, gritty cityscapes, and vampire-free adventures, then you’ll love Jon Auerbach’s rollercoaster tale.
It’s so hard for me to begin this review, because I enjoyed this book so much! This is a self-described unconventional urban fantasy, which a tantalizing mystery, an all knowing secret organization, and a secret that runs so deep through the heart of New York City.
Jen is a coder by day and Quester by night, but also day sometimes too. In the beginning, we get glimpses of Jen’s regular life as a resident of NYC, but the reader is quickly introduced to the Quest Board and the infrastructure that holds it all together. With every chapter, Auerbach gives us a tiny morsel of information that will, we hope, eventually be part of the bigger picture of what’s going on in the story. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to solve the puzzle with Jen as she navigates through the world of Quests, tokens, requesters, etc. It takes an incredible amount of skill to keep your reader guessing at every turn and I commend Auberbach for this achievement.
The relationships between the characters are carefully developed, and I really enjoyed the dynamic between Jen and Beatrice, which doesn’t develop fully until about 1/4 of the way into the book. Another point is that some urban fantasy books can be nonstop action, but this book is action threaded through a fantastic puzzle, with a splash of magic. I was glad that every scene was not an action sequence, but there is absolutely danger in this book, though subtle at points.
The plot and pacing kept me engaged from cover to cover. Overall, this is a great urban fantasy with a unique premise! Guild of Tokens is on tour with Storyteller’s On Tour to celebrate the release of the audiobook! Be sure to order your copy today, enter the giveaway below, and see all of the other great stops on this tour!
Thank you to Jon Auerbach and Storyteller’s on Tour for having me on this tour! I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This was a pleasure to read!
Jon Auerbach’s love of fantasy began at the tender age of six, when his parents bought him the classic 1977 animated version of The Hobbit (the less said about the recent trilogy, the better). His passion for sci-fi developed from nights watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and from his dad’s old paperback copies of Foundation and I, Robot.
Jon writes in both genres and hopes to pass on his stories to the next generation, including his kids, who have their own copy of The Hobbit that they lovingly call “the Bilbo book.”
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