Author: Jill Braden
Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
Rating: Worthy!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
The Devil's Concubine is another exercise in making sure you choose a unique title for your novel. Barnes & Noble lists six titles with this name and that doesn't even include Palle Schmidt's graphic novel with this same title. The cover art is exquisite, although I don't normally address covers because the author typically has little or nothing to do with them. This blog is about writing! This novel is evidently the first in a series. The sequel, The Devil Incarnate is already available and the author is working on the third in this unique series.
Jill Braden is a fellow blogspotter, although I don't know her. From her blog (link above) it sounds like she writes pretty much like I do (in terms of basic approach) which is a bit nice to know, and it looks like she blogs about her writing as she goes. I've never recommended a writer's blog before, although I always link to it if I can find a link, but in this case I will make an exception because it looks like she's all about writing too, something which I have to say I admire and in which I find a lot of comfort! Her blog is not one of those nothing-but-promote-myself blogs like all-too-many writer's blogs seem to be to me. Please go take a look.
Braden's is actually a dynamic blog. I love, for example, that she's a Doctor Who fan, and that she gets so passionate about Irene Adler from the British series revived by Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss: Sherlock You can find my refutation of the standard criticisms of the Lara Pulver episode here. I think too many people, several of whom are purportedly feminists, sadly got this wrong in their quite evidently undue haste to condemn Moffat's Adler, and I think they will realize how wrong they got it when Irene Adler returns. Of course, I could be wrong (I often am!), but we'll see.
The critics' main problem, in my opinion, is in first of all misunderstanding Adler in the original Doyle version, and thereby pumping her up into something she was actually not and second, in misunderstanding Moffat's version even more than they have misunderstood Doyle's. That's not to say that their criticism is entirely without foundation, but I think such criticism needs to be much more realistic than it has hitherto shown itself to be.
What bothers me about Braden's criticism is that she's a writer herself! If she's so outraged by it, why doesn't she take up the challenge and write her own Adler story? That I'd like to see, especially since she appears (from what I've read of her blog so far) to share many of my own views on strong female characters! Indeed, I had several fleeting ideas for my own Adler story once I'd caught up with all the jetsam in the wake of Moffat's juggernaut version of the tale. I volunteer to co-write it with her to make sure both male and female perspectives are adequately represented; then let people come and criticize our effort! Bring it on!
But I digress! In several ways, this novel reminds me of Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey, which I also reviewed, although it's a very different story. It does have a similar vibe in that, for example, the main protagonist is a woman of pleasure who is subjected to some pain (not willingly, and nowhere near as much in this novel as in the other), and who is in a position of some power which she can wield only in secret or indirectly. Like Kushiel's Dart, it's also well-written: beautifully expressive and evocative. Some might find the story a little slow-moving to begin with (I did not), but that makes it only more suggestive of the roller-coaster that it is, and once it gets going, there's no stopping it. You will want to ride it to the end, and then get on again (in volume 2!).
The name, QuiTai sounds remarkably like the name of my favorite female character of all time: Kitai from the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. Talk about strong females! Of course, that does depend upon how the name is supposed to be pronounced, but there's no guide offered to that end, so I'll pronounce it how I choose, thank you very much! This QuiTai is nowhere near in that Kitai's league, but she's definitely worth following.
In this novel, too, the main character is an alien, but in this case, a humanoid with some snake traits. I'd gage her to be the first cousin to the snake on the tree in Eden if I believed in fairy tales: she definitely has the same skill set! Like some snakes, QuiTai has collapsible venomous fangs in her sweet mouth, and the venom can be used, in moderation, to summon her oracle god, into the mouth of those she injects, enabling them to foretell future events for QuiTai, although as usual with this kind of thing, it doesn't seem to do her much good, or to keep her out of trouble!
The Devil in this story, is a werewolf pack-leader named Petrof; a disgusting animal of a man, who nevertheless somehow manages to evoke passion (either in the form of anger or of pure lust) within QuiTai. She's the concubine to this werewolf, but given that he has no wife, I'm not convinced that 'concubine' is technically the correct term. I freely grant that it makes for a much more intriguing title, however. Be advised that I am not a fan of werewolf stories, so I launched into this with some trepidation, although by the halfway point, I'd decided that this was not a drawback for me, and I was quite happy with where this novel went and how it turned out. This is not your grandmother's werewolf story! Indeed, it isn't a werewolf story at all, not in the big picture.
QuiTai lives on a island - an occupied island where the colonists rule everything, and where exotic beings of several hues and varieties coexist. It's rather reminiscent of North America in the mid-eighteenth century, ruled from afar and bearing a heavy tax burden, but the characters which populate this tale make the colonists and their overlords look like characters out of a children's story book! Just as QuiTai is being picked-up to visit her master to serve his animal needs, she receives a secret note from someone she considers to be her arch enemy: an artist named Kyam Kul. He's of the same race as that which is occupying the island, and he hails from a wealthy family from which he's apparently all but exiled in disgrace. And he's also not an artist. Not in his soul, at any rate.
What he wants from her she does not know, but she finds it intriguing that right at the point where she has been having indefinable feelings that something is seriously amiss on the island somehow, somewhere, her enemy has reached out to her. She has to talk The Devil into letting her pose for a portrait in order to get time with Kyam to find out what he wants - and whether what he wants will serve her interests adequately. I confess I was a bit disappointed that more was not made of the scene where he starts to draw her. I saw a potential for some very subtle eroticism there, which failed to materialize, but it's rather hard to be so sensual when there's sand blowing into every crevice...!
From that point onwards, the story is one of intrigue, adventure, danger, and death, and I loved every minute of it. It's a very original tale with some unexpected story devices to keep the interest boiling and move the plot along organically, not artificially. Everything fits and everything works. It did slow down for me in the second half, a little bit, but by then I had enough investment in it that I wasn't going to let that get in my way. Overall, it's professionally written and very entrancing. This is a story that makes all the poor ones worth wading through just to find something as seductive as this. I recommend it highly.
