From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
Be warned that this is going to be a more rambling review than usual because there are several aspects of this story that I need to address. Anyone who's read any of my 'non-reviews' will know that I have little respect for book descriptions which are trite, uninventive, and always playing to the lowest common denominator. More on this anon. In short though, they're written for idiots, frequently by someone who evidently has never even read the novel they're 'describing'. The blurbs are often dishonest and as I point out regularly, they have certain key words and phrases that ought to warn you away from the book that's being described.
So I have only myself to blame for the fact that I ignored my own advice with this book and I consequently paid the price of wasting my time on a novel that I should have turned my back on the instant that I read the description. The thing is that I was intrigued by what seemed like it might be a good LGBTQIA story - and set at the turn of last century, no less. It sounded too good to be true and it was.
I need to preface this by detouring slightly into talking about audiobooks and how you can have your phone read you an ebook as though it's an audiobook. I can't speak for Android phones, but for iPhones there's a technology called 'voice over' which is an assisted-use system that reads your screen to you, indicating buttons and other stuff on the screen. In order to make this work, you need to open your ebook to the place you want to begin reading, and ask Siri to turn on Voice Over. For those who don't already know, I'd like to share with you that Siri is ADHD, so it may take more than one request to get her to start it, and more than two requests to get her to stop, but once voice over is in play, simply tap on the first sentence you want to be read, then slide two fingers lightly down the screen from there to the bottom of the screen, and Voice Over will read your ebook to you!
Note that this is far from perfect. The voice is unnatural which is why I call it Robot Reader, and it's subject to disruption if the text contains images or has gaps in it (as Kindle frequently does, which is yet one more reason to avoid all things Amazon like the plague. But overall, it works pretty good, and I get through a lot of books this way. It's also amusing listening Robot Reader's quirky pronunciations, so there is some entertainment value from that, too.
I honestly do not understand why the big ebook publishers do not employ this. Google has similar technology. They could adapt it easily to read your ebooks to you - or to your kids. Apple has it. Kobo books could quite readily get their hands on it, as could Barnes and Noble. B&N has had their ass kicked to the curb by the despicable Amazon, so why they aren't fighting tooth and nail to get every edge they can, I do not know. I guess their management is simply incompetent.
All this to explain why I was impressed by Net Galley's audiobook technology employed on this novel. While far from perfect, this was the best yet, and it really has great potential. It was a synthesized voice, but it sounded real - not at all like my adorable Robot Reader. There were flaws. The voice sounded quite flat; it was lacking inflection and 'life' for want of a better term, but it read quite competently and sounded reasonably normal.
My issues with it were that the voice was completely wrong for the novel, which was supposedly being told in first person by not one, but two people who were in their teens. The Net Galley synthesized voice didn't remotely sound like a teenage boy. Obviously if they can synthesize the voice, they can synthesize a sixteen-year-old voice. Why they didn't I don't know. This made the novel rather tedious to listen to at times, but that's not all on the synthesizing. I'd love to get my crazed, inventive hands on this technology, rest assured!
As usual, the biggest problem was the novel itself. It was not at all well-written, and it was slow-moving and uninspiring. Plus, listening to it as an audiobook while driving is not the best way to take in this book. When I'm driving, my attention is of course on the driving, where it should be. This is especially true if it's a problematic drive, so the book loses my attention even if it's an interesting one. This book wasn't.
I pay more attention to a story in the early morning when the roads are largely empty, than when I'm driving home during rush hour, so I missed portions of this, which isn't typically a problem, but in this case it lead to serious confusion because I didn't realize to begin with, that this was dual-first-person voice (DFPV). It is. And the switch between characters went undetected.
The thing is that when you do a DFPV, you have to identify at the start of the chapter who is speaking. The problem was exacerbated in this novel because the author pretentiously put the location and the date at the start of the chapter like it was some big important announcement. My eyes (or in this case, my ears) skate right over that crap because typically it's just annoying, irrfelevant, and so self-importantly pretentious in an already overly self-important first person story that it leaves me cold.
Normally, 1PoV is quite irritating enough, and it's exponentially worse when it's squared. DFPV is merely the author's cute way of admitting that they made a serious mistake in choosing first person voice to begin with. Typically, it's a grave mistake because it limits your story and your options; it makes the main character insufferably self-centered, and the voice is unnatural. No one but an imbecile narrates their own life as it's happening. No one but an eidetic can recall conversations and actions verbatim, and eidetics have their own raft of issues to deal with.
1PoV constantly tosses me right out of suspension of disbelief because it's so inauthentic and annoying: hey lookit me! This is what I'm doing now! Pay attention to meeee! Barf! It's worse when the author admits they screwed-up by having to add a second 1PoV or resort to third person for portions of the novel. It's laughable and I avoid these stories whenever I can. In this case I had no warning that it was first person or I would never have even started reading it. Such books should carry a warning like cigarette packs do. I actually did that on a parody novel I wrote!
So, let's look at the novel itself. The first warning ought to have been the title, which is a bit pretentious but not godawful. The next indication that this was to be fled from was the use of the words 'star-crossed' in the description. That's like a bio-hazard warning to me, and in this case, it's bullshit, but like an idiot, I ignored it. The second warning was that one of the main characters is called 'Jack' - the most tediously over-used go-to name in literary history for an action character. It shows a complete and utter lack of imagination on the part of the author, but like a dimwit, I ignored that because this wasn't an action adventure novel. More fool me!
The story is of two rival illusionists, one whom goes by the name of 'The Enchantress' for whom Jack Nevin works. He's a skilled thief, and he steals the secrets of other magicians and illusionists, which The Enchantress then incorporates into her own act. It's how she's stayed on top for so long. Her rival is Laszlo, who also has an assistant for whom Jack falls. That's the LGBTQIA part of the novel, but it played such a non-existent part in the story to the point where I could stand to hear no more of this (25% in) that the book may as well have been a cis novel.
Naturally you can't publish a novel in the USA unless it takes place in the US or at least has one important American in it. It's against the constitution, you know? Who cares about the rest of the world? As Donald Trump says, it's entirely unimportant. The US is the only nation worth considering or writing about. So despite starting out in Paris, the City of love, the novel quickly comes running home to mamma. Barf.
I honestly wish US authors had far more courage than they do. And were more inventive and original; especially YA authors. I would have loved for it to stay in Paris, but it ain't gonna happen. Not from an American author. At least not often. You can argue: well, they're only writing what people will buy, but is that really the truth? And is that really what should motivate us? Do authors have to bow down to the LCD that I mentioned earlier, tugging forelocks and kowtowing, or ought they instead to be leading their readership to greener, fresher pastures? If the readers are really such sheep, why not?!
So when things go south, The Enchantress and her crew head to Seattle. Why there, I have no idea, except that was an exposition going on, I guess so they thought they could score big there. Or is it just that this is where the author lives?! Anyway, that's when they run into Laszlo and his crew, and when Jack first gets to meet his love, who sadly isn't named Jill - or any masculine variant thereof! Jilhelm?
The thing about Lazslo is that his assistant, Wilhelm, really can do magic and Jack is at a loss to explain how it's done, thinking it's just another illusion. Wilhelm is a sort of BDSM slave to Lazslo, and not in any decent or fun way. He's outright abused. Frankly this part of the story turned me right off, and that, along with the tedium of the plodding pace, I lost all interest. I simply could not stand to listen to any more, so I DNF'd it. Life is far too short to spend it on stories that don't do it for ya. I can't commend this based on the portion I listened to, and for the reasons I've detailed above.
