Five Phantom Discount by Marcus Fell & Jason Krumbine - ARC Review
Oceans 5 in the magical underbelly of New York City


I am thankful to Sterling & Stone, NetGalley, and the authors for my review copy. Below are my honest thoughts on this fun book


In Ocean’s 11, Professional thief Danny Ocean gets out on parole, rounds up his old gang, and plans a supposedly impossible heist on the day of a high-profile event while also attempting to win his ex-wife back. Plans get re-planned, banter reigns supreme, chaos thrives, and hijinks ensue

In Ocean’s 8, Professional con artist Debbie Ocean gets out on parole, rounds up her old gang, and plans a supposedly impossible heist on the day of a high-profile event while attempting to take revenge on her ex-partner who sent her to jail. Plans get re-planned, banter reigns supreme, chaos thrives, and hijinks ensue

In Five Phantom Discount, Frank Phantom gets out on parole, rounds up a gang of magical practitioners, plans a supposedly impossible magical heist on the day of a high-profile event while attempting to win his ex-wife back and take revenge on his ex-partner who sent him to jail. Plans get re-planned, banter reigns supreme, chaos thrives, and hijinks ensue

“Cliche. But cliches were cliches for a reason.”

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination,” said Jim Jarmusch. Five Phantom Discount steals almost everything from the Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 8. Given this is a heist novel, the stealing context is fabulously meta and a whole lot of fun. The addition of magic makes this book stand out from the Oceans series as is rooting the book in NYC rather than Vegas.

“Magic and Crime make for a terrible mix. People are too quick to give in to their base desires when there’s magic involved”

When you are inspired so much, it pays to hew close to the things that work and then innovate. Five Phantom Discount captures the relentless charm and wittiness of the Oceans series perfectly. The to-and-fro repartee and the banter keep things extremely fresh and fun as Frank Phantom, out on parole, tries to get back to his old life. He immediately forges his connection with Clay Bishop, the Rusty to Frank’s Danny. Bishop has also been maintaining a low profile, as he was also one of the partners betrayed on the job, which got Frank sent to prison. Bishop, a conman specialising in glamor, plays the straight man to an extent to Frank’s outrageous schemes, often acting as the sounding board (a rather complaining sounding board) while secretly being thrilled by what Frank has conceptualised. This relationship is the heartbeat of this novel, and their to-and-fro barbs keep the narrative chugging along at a brisk pace

“My good behaviour hasn’t always been my best behaviour”

Frank’s target is a vault being held by Deacon, the partner who betrayed him on their last mission. Deacon not only double-crossed Frank but also stole Frank’s ex-wife. Deacon has also used the contents of the vault to rewire his image to become a successful businessman and is now the favourite to become mayor of New York. This makes Deacon a heavily guarded and protected target, a target made harder by the fact that Deacon has struck a deal with some of the largest magical underworld elements to protect this vault. It is this setup that confronts Frank and Bishop as they go about hiring a team to take Deacon down, and gradually we get the formation of Frank’s Five, which includes a necromancer, a magical hacker, and an old mentor who comes on board. Naturally, things go bad, the team has to improvise, and certain decisions have to be made. In the middle of all this is the magical equivalent of the FBI that is still after Frank for the heist he committed 6 years ago, led by the dogged Agent Veyne.

“Garry, the severed head, sat in the middle of the table, a hand towel covering him and two thick cables extending out of the back of his head and plugged into a black box with arcane symbols etched into it. There was a USB-C port on the opposite side of the black box and another cable extending to Olivia’s laptop. USB-Z, Olivia explained”

The narrative is extremely fast-paced, and it almost feels like this is a book written for the screen. The Oceans series reference also helps the reader kind of go along with the story with a bunch of laughs thrown in, especially at the most inopportune moments. The presence of magic and the complications that magic throws keep the book fresh as well. The seeds of divergence from the Oceans series are seeded in bits in the middle portion of the book when Frank encounters Agent Veyne - the piece that Frank stole 6 years ago, now nestling in Deacon’s vault, is actually a very powerful trinket and may have much wider implications for the whole world. These divergences come into play in the last 15% of the book, especially during the heist. This is where the book crafts its own path and identity from the Oceans series. Frank makes a series of choices that are, in a way, keeping in line with the regrets and the wishes that he had, having spent 6 years in prison, and it plays out in an interesting manner. This is what helps this book avoid being a complete facsimile of the Oceans series, but shows a new confident path for Frank & Bishop to take the story onto. In a way, that is the bigger heist that they pull on the reader. Having lulled the reader into predictability, they pull the rug from under and veer into a very interesting, unpredictable direction, and this makes it a series to watch out for. This is also interesting, as I would like the author to delve a bit deeper into the cost of magic and how it actually works. That element of the book was a bit hand-wavey and never felt explored enough - Frank and Bishop are glib enough that we don’t care for that in that moment, but if you think back, you realize those elements are lacking in this story & felt weak

“I’m just constantly amazed by how you manage to thread the line of not lying, but also not telling the truth, and again, with the most authentic sincerity I have ever witnessed”

Five Phantom Discount is a fantastic start to a series - a book that wholly draws inspiration from the Oceans series while setting it in the NYC underworld and adding magic to the mix. The book is fast-paced, charming, and a whole lot of fun while being mostly derivative & needing some depth. However, the last 15% allows the book to strike its path and sets the series up for interesting times ahead, and rest assured, this is a series I plan on continuing

4 Magical Heists on 5

This is the first book in a new Phantom and Bishop series. I saw the fantastic cover and was captivated. The book obviously had wizards or magic, and that drew me in.
This novel has the wonderful traits of Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, and Kim Harrison. There is plenty of crafty plotting, suspense mixed with humor, intriguing characters, great world building, and deep character depth with main characters. I felt like I was there. So fun!
Their world has magic and laws to control the magic users. Our guys and gals are not always on the side of the law. It's complicated.
I hope this will be a long series! I can't wait to follow these characters on more adventures.
I want to thank the authors, publisher, and NetGalley for letting me read this exciting and magical book.

Five Phantom Discount
by Marcus Fell and Jason Krumbine
This is the first book in a new Phantom and Bishop series. I saw the fantastic cover and was captivated. The book obviously had wizards or magic, and that drew me in.
This novel has the wonderful traits of Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, and Kim Harrison. There is plenty of crafty plotting, suspense mixed with humor, intriguing characters, great world building, and deep character depth with main characters. I felt like I was there. So fun!
Their world has magic and laws to control the magic users. Our guys and gals are not always on the side of the law. It's complicated.
I hope this will be a long series! I can't wait to follow these characters on more adventures.
I want to thank the authors, publisher, and NetGalley for letting me read this exciting and magical book.

First of all, if bad language offends you, this is not the book for you. There's a lot of it.

Secondly, if you enjoyed Ocean's Eleven, this has a lot of the same elements. It starts out with a con man just out of prison who wants to do a job on a guy who is now sleeping with his ex-wife, for one thing. But it isn't just Ocean's Eleven retold.

It's set in a version of our world where some people can use magic, and this appears to be publicly known, since there are US federal laws about it; the main character, Frank Phantom, fell foul of these laws as part of a job six years previously, and has spent the interim in a prison for magic users. Now that he's out, he and his partner Clay Bishop, who were betrayed by Deacon, their third partner on that previous job, want to steal from him. Deacon's used two of the three wishes that the genie he gained through that heist granted him, in order to screw them over and reinvent himself, and is about to be elected as the Mayor of New York, as a prelude to running for president.

The book follows the usual beginning for a heist story; the team is gathered and told how impossible the job is. (I would note that not all of the impossibilities are really dealt with in the actual heist. In particular,



<spoiler>the impossibility of getting into the vault - that turns out to be super easy, barely an inconvenience - and the inconvenient fact that even if you get in you'll be hit with a death curse, which is part of the "this is impossible" discussion but never comes up again. </spoiler>


There's a creepy Ukrainian necromancer who can gather information from dead ex-employees of the security team; a technomancer hacker (a young woman whose grandfather was the first choice for the position, but he's dead); Bishop, who's a glamourist and can make things look like what they're not; Phantom, who's the mastermind, and can't work magic because he's on parole and has tattoos that prevent him from doing so or at least will report if he does; and Lemonade, a retired criminal who they convince to come back for one last job.






<spoiler>Another inconsistency: Phantom's "shadow walk" after the job takes more than 20 minutes, but the part of the heist that prevents the tattoos from functioning only lasts 8 minutes - which includes getting into the vault and doing the actual job itself - and yet the alarm doesn't go off when he comes out.</spoiler>







There are two main ways of telling a heist story. One is for the reader to know the plan in advance, see it all go wrong, and then see how the crew improvise their way to success anyway (or actually have another secret plan which involved things going wrong in exactly that way). The other is for us not to know the plan in advance, but watch it unfold in narrative time, which is what this book does. Both can be enjoyable, and this plan is clever (and involves the main character going through some rough times). As already noted, not everything in the "this is impossible" scene gets addressed when the heist unfolds, though.

There's a lot of banter - sometimes, for me, too much; it bogs down the pace of some of the scenes, without being quite good enough banter to make up for it. A lot of it consists of people insulting each other and being mutually hostile, with, as I've noted, copious swearing. Sometimes it's creative and funny; other times, less so.

Not badly edited; there are a few of the usual issues, including dialog punctuation, the odd vocabulary error, unclosed quotation marks and missing or added words in sentences, but they're thinly scattered. As always, I include the disclaimer that books I get from Netgalley may (but also may not) receive more editing after I see them, but before publication.

Overall, it's a good heist novel, if you don't mind sweary and not very likeable characters who banter a bit too much, and can ignore or don't notice the fact that not all of the threads are tied up neatly. Those factors together dragged it down to the Bronze tier of my annual recommendation list.

This one wasn’t quite for me, but I think that’s more about me being the wrong audience than any fault with the story itself. The premise and plot had a lot of potential, and I can see it really resonating with the right readers. While it didn’t fully click for me, I appreciate what the author was doing and think it could be an enjoyable read for other

This book had major Ocean's 8 vibes and I loved that.

This was well written and grabbed my interest almost immediately. The banter and general dialogue is good, relatable. The whole book is one heist from announcement to aftermath, bits of backstory and character sprinkled throughout. The technomagic was the most interesting magic, I think, and not just because the practitioner was a young lady. I will probably read the next one when it is available. Great start to a series, lots of potential avenues to explore and it's a good universe.

TL/DR: Did you like the synopsis? Great! I said it below but I will say it again “This book has a unique but familiar magic system, revenge best served cold and of course “the one that got away”.
I highly recommend getting this book.

Ok, first off to #MarcusFell and #JasonKrumbine, thank you. I am a sucker for any new series or books that have magic, wizards, mages, witches, etc. I loved that your world building included magic in a way that was familiar and new at the same time.

I would also like to thank #SterlingAndStone and #NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy. As always, my review is voluntary and all opinions are my own.

This was such a fun and *quick* read for me. I couldn’t put it down and read it in one evening. The two MMC Frank Phantom and Clay Bishop remind me of an old married couple who can have a whole conversation with just one look or in their case, friends who have history.

This book has a unique but familiar magic system, revenge best served cold and of course “the one that got away”.

I can’t wait to see what this pair and some of their new and old friends are going to get up to in book two.


#FivePhantomDiscount #MarcusFell #JasonKrumbine #NetGalley #PhantomAndBishopSeries #BookOne #ARC
#Magic #ComputerWiz #SketchyCharacters #AnOddSenseOfFoundFamily

A huge thankyou to both Sterling and Stone as well as Net galley for an early ARC copy of this amazing story!.
The story reminded me of a combination of The Dresden Files meets Oceans Eleven with a cleverly done and entertaining supernatural twist.
In this urban fantasy story, we are introduced to the two main characters of both Frank Phantom (recently out of prison) and his good friend from back in the day Clay Bishop, who, along with a rag tag group of individuals decide to take part in a heist in order to procure an important item and also as a means of getting due justice on who and what landed Frank in prison in the first place.
I was hooked from start to finish with this story (a strong debut to what I am sure will be a fantastic series of books down the track). The characters were well developed, the settings immersive and well structured and the plot was both unique and had a suspenseful climax that kept me on the edge of my seat- in the literal sense!.
I would be excited to see where the series goes from this point as it was a very enjoyable, humorous dual author story in its entirety.

My all-time favorite genre is urban fantasy like the author Jim Butcher writes, and I’m always on the lookout for an author or book like that. I came across this one, and I thought, why not? Well, I’m very glad I did. Frank walks a thin line between being good and bad, and he does a great job of staying on that line. Add in some other interesting characters, and now I’m hooked. This also has a slight noir feeling I’m not a huge fan of, but everything else makes up for that. I am ready to read more about Frank, Clay, Olivia, and all the rest. Well-written, intriguing, fun, and action-packed, this is sure to please fans of urban fantasy. Highly recommend. I was provided a complimentary copy which I voluntarily reviewed.

Was a fantastic book that i thoroughly recommend and will be buying as I need a trophy version lol. I enjoying the different dynamics at play between the main characters especially towards the end.