What is it?
White Trash Warlock is a 2020 debut urban fantasy novel by David R. Slayton, and the first of Adam Binder Novels. As of this writing, there are only two books, with Trailer Park Trickster having come out in October of 2021.
What's it about?
Synopsis cross-posted to TvTropes
Adam Lee Binder is a twenty-one year old high school drop out and former mental patient struggling to make ends meet while living in a trailer park with his great-aunt Sue.
He is also a witch, which complicates things. Seeing and hearing magic is what got his older brother to put him in the mental institution to begin with, and on top of it, Adam's magic isn't strong in any way that might be useful. When Adam isn't busy struggling to find work, he devotes his time to tracking down a malevolent warlock who has been targeting supernatural beings and binding their pain into cursed artifacts— a warlock he is afraid may actually be his missing father who walked out on the family when Adam was a very small child.
When his brother, formerly Bobby Jack Binder, but now respectable Dr. Robert Binder, contacts him begging for help with an evil spirit that's possessed his wife, Adam bites the bullet and goes to Denver, only to find every local witch dead. Now Adam has to deal with a malevolent spirit older than Death, eldritch abominations, elven nobility, and his family's troubled past.
What Do You Think?
I want to be clear that I do like these books. I intend to keep up with them, and am waiting for the third. That said. . .
On the one hand, I like where these books are going. I can really see this being a satisfying series, and I am enjoying what I've read so far. On the other hand, you can tell that White Trash Warlock especially is a debut novel; there are some things that don't quite mesh, some rough edges that don't quite polish out, and these carry over a little to the second book. These are likely nitpicks, but they were enough to color my satisfaction and sense of verisimilitude in the first, though they are by no means deal-breakers (and other people probably won't care).
Before the plot proper begins, we see Adam do one thing: rescue some frat boy who has a cursed pool cue. The dude doesn't know it's cursed, his dad got it for him at a thrift shop. The cue is one of the aforementioned artifacts made from the bone and suffering of a magic creature. Adam wants it to: 1. See if he can locate the warlock who made it and 2. Destroy it. In the process of trying to convince the dude to hand over the cue, a group of lizard-people called Saurians interrupt; the cue is made from the bones of one of their people, and they want it and the frat boy in order to take revenge. Adam talks the situation down, gives them the cue, and manages to get himself and the frat dude out safely. End scene. The real plot kicks in shortly after. It is a good opener, in my opinion.
However, pivotal moments later in the first book, as well as the second book, involve supernatural creatures being convinced of Adam's strength of character and general goodliness because of the myriad of selfless actions he's done, like giving back that pool cue, and saving that cop. And. . . uh. That's basically it. The pool cue thing, specifically, is brought up as proof that he is a wonderful person, ignoring the fact that giving back the pool cue also helped get him out of trouble, too. Adam is a nice dude and all, but the other characters talk him up like he's running for Jesus. In retrospect, this can be to show that supernatural creatures are so jaded towards humanity that they are impressed by even the smallest bits of altruism, but when you're reading it in the moment, it feels a little Gary Stu.
The other thing that threw me was how the elves/fairies are handled. This is entirely on me, but the fact that these ones can lie really threw me off my game. I got used to the traditional-style ones with the traditional-style rules (vulnerable to cold iron, can't lie directly, bound by oaths, etc.). The ones here are handled entirely differently, with elves being akin to minor gods more than anything else, with the ability to lie and no notable aversion to iron. It's not bad, it just fucked me up for a bit.
One thing that I found interesting is the use of tarot motifs. They're all over the place in these books, with Adam and Sue both using cards for divination (with Sue being better at it than Adam), and the assorted supernatural factions wind up being closely related to/represented by the different cards. In both books, the divinations start out being interpreted symbolically (as with actual tarot readings), but are eventually revealed to be more literal as the plot progresses. It's played a little more subtly in the first book, but in the second book, the tarot connections become clear enough that Adam is able to use his knowledge of the cards and of elves to discern what faction he's working with, and I am interested to see where this goes in future books.
As I said before, I do like these books and want to know where they're going. I recommend them if you don't mind waiting on a 3rd book, or if you wanna see a gay wizard shoot arrows at Cthulhu.