For all her life, Sollis has been weird: taller than normal and possessed of strange wild magic. After making use of her abilities as best she can for some time, she is recruited into a mission with four other gifted individuals. Aidan can communicate with wood, coaxing it into new shapes; Nyelle has bardic powers that can shape sound itself; Lormek is a beloved of Thor haunted by strange dreams; and the gnome Garrett uses his roguish talents to help the party out of tight spots. But what starts as a normal heist soon turns into a battle for reality itself.

As the five new companions navigate conspiracy, magical history, and mysterious writings from a far-off world, Sollis and Lormek attempt to make sense of a strange connection between them. A power beneath the city calls to Sollis, and it soon becomes clear that there is more to her even than already meets the eye.

As mentioned in the Author's Note, The Crack in the Crystal was inspired by a pandemic-era D&D campaign. This is evident for better or for worse—for better in that there's clearly a great deal of care put into character voices, worldbuilding, and giving everyone a satisfying ending; for worse in that characters will occasionally underreact to major revelations. The latter can sometimes pull the reader out of what is otherwise an enthralling read. That said, The Crack in the Crystal is still fun fantasy with a spirit of escapism and camaraderie that D&D players will enjoy and an admirable twist in the tale at the end.

This book is a captivating debut that seamlessly blends mystery and fantasy. Barak's storytelling draws you into a world filled with magic, danger, and unexpected twists. The dynamics between the five strangers create an engaging journey that's both thrilling and heartfelt. A must-read for adventure lovers! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I stopped reading this book at The Reunion chapter. While there were parts of the book I found engaging and enjoyed, there were other parts (dream sequences, the gnome escaping down the sewer) that I found uncomfortable to read and somewhat akin to horror writing.

D&D-inspired (the characters are based on the party in a game that the author runs), but not simply D&D; there's no question of copyright issues. While the characters' classes are recognizable - sorcerer, rogue, ranger/druid, bard - their abilities aren't from a template common in their world, but are unusual and specific to them.

Because it doesn't simply follow a D&D game, but is a story created from scratch, it has more depth and coherence than you might otherwise expect, and the twist ending adequately accounts for the coincidences that are needed to make it work. The characters grow and change at least a little, their relationships develop, and the plot makes for a satisfying arc.

What it isn't is a heist. It starts out looking as if the characters are being assembled as a heist crew, but... they're not, and the heistlike parts at the beginning are rudimentary, and we're soon on to something else. I like heists, so this was a bit of a disappointment, but it's not like the quest/investigation plot that it turned into wasn't enjoyable.

Much of the prose is well edited; the author avoids several common mistakes, in fact. The main exception is that the past perfect tense is frequently missing. This was a constant irritation to me, because of the temporal whiplash of the narrative in simple past tense continuing to use simple past tense when it referred to events earlier in the past (prior to the narrative moment). I read a pre-publication version via Netgalley, so there is some chance that a good editor will fix this before publication, though honestly I would be a bit surprised if that happens. That's a big part of what kept the story from rising to the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list, though it's solidly in Bronze. This is a promising author, and I hope he learns to use the past perfect more consistently before writing a sequel, because I'd like to read it.