I'll be honest when I say that while I'll definitely buy the next book in the series, I was a little underwhelmed by this book. There was just so much about this that screamed of awesomeness, but somewhere in the delivery it just sort of felt a little "been there, done that". 
 First off, the premise of this is great. Jacka has built a nicely formed world ala Harry Dresden, even giving the fictional wizard a nod in the beginning of the novel. I also liked the idea of having Alex running a magic shop, which gives us lots of possibilities for future novels. The character of Alex is rather nice, being both a jerk and a relatively nice guy, sometimes in the same breath. True, he's your typical world-weary-everyone-hates-him sort of character, but these types are popular for a reason. Nobody really wants to read about "Mike, the guy who was liked by everyone and never had anything bad happen to him or anyone else ever", at least not unless he's going to have some bad stuff thrown at him in the course of the story. Plus a talking spider? Awesomeness. 
 The only downfall is that despite some pretty good stuff going on in the book, there are also points in the book where I just felt a little bored and the plot just seems to sort of drag under its own weight. It just felt a little meh for the most part, especially towards the ending. Like I said, I liked the book well enough to where I'll buy the next book in the series and know that it deserves at least three stars, but not enough to where I feel particularly inspired to give it more than three stars.