The Last Necromancer by CJ Archer

Rating: WARTY!

If only it were the last necromancer, but alas! There will be more stories about necromancers, I fear.

Despite having misgivings about this, I started reading it because it was a new take on Frankenstein. While we unfortunately get vampire stories up the wazoo, and quite a few sad werewolf ones too, we don't see any of the other classic monsters (Frankenstein, the Mummy, etc.) retreaded very often. So I was curious about this one, especially since it has a girl living as a boy on streets of London.

Technically, Frankenstein is the Georgian period, not the Victorian in which this novel is set, but it wasn't that important to me. What is important is that I get a good, original (even if borrowed from a classic!) story that moves at a decent pace, and which entertains me, and I sensed quickly that I was not about to get any of that from this, as it turned into yet another trope-laden YA romance story.

It started out well-enough in that this girl Charlotte (who goes by the unoriginal and unimaginative 'Charlie' as a boy) has the ability to raise the dead, and she's kidnapped by this guy Lincoln Fitzroy. It was painfully obvious right from the start that he and Charlie would be an item, and it was so telegraphed and pathetic, and so, so inappropriate that I wanted to give up right then, but I read on a little way to see if the author could rescue it or had anything new to offer; once it became crystal clear she did not is when I DNF'd this.

Fitzroy is often a euphemism sort of a name for a king's bastard offspring, but I have no idea if that's the case here or if the author just blindly chose it as a 'cool name' (it really isn't). This guy, as I said, kidnaps Charlotte, and holds her prisoner without giving her any idea of why he's doing this. They butt heads repeatedly, and it became quickly tedious to read at that point.

It turns out that the reason she's kidnapped is that the people employing Fitzroy want Charlotte kept out of the hands of Frankenstein, who is having a problem animating his creation, and since Charlotte can reanimate a dead person's body by calling their spirit back into it - over which she then has complete control - she is of course of inestimable use to him. I don't doubt that happens further down the line in what is probably an inevitable trilogy. Correction: I later learned this is a ten book series! Are you fucking joking? Jesus! But I figured Frankenstein will indeed get his hands on Charlotte, and I have no interest in yet another tedious YA love triangle or a tedious ten-novel series, especially not one written this badly.

I so quickly tired of the imprisonment and the cruelty and the business of treating Charlotte like a child - although she did behave like one often. But there was meanness and cruelty involved in her imprisonment and the author seems not to care a whit about Stockholm syndrome, like this adversarial and punitive relationship is the perfect start to what will somehow magically blossom into passionate and undying love. Barf. Get a clue, Archer, please. You're missing the target by miles.

The last straw for me was when Fitzroy gave Charlotte her wish and freed her in a poor part of London dressed to the nines, and left her to her fate. He was of course following her so he could rescue this poor waif, but that wasn't the saddest part. The saddest part wasnt even that Fitzroy had purposefully hired a thug to threaten Charlotte so that he could "rescue" her and have her even further in his debt. The guy is a complete dick and a jerk.

No, the problem was a complete betrayal of Charlotte, and the most inauthentic part of the novel. Charlotte had been living on the streets for several years before she was captured by Fitzroy, but now she's portrayed as somehow being inexplicably and completely at a loss as to what to do, where to go, and how to keep herself safe. Inevitably she falls into the hands of this ruthless and brutal rapist that Fitzroy hired, thereby forcing Charlotte further into his control and dominance. Way to trash your main character's entire backstory, Archer! I'm done with this atrocious author.

The Ministry of Curiosities by CJ Archer

Rating: WARTY!

"Charlie, a necromancer, conceals her identity by posing as a boy...." How original! No girl has ever posed as a boy and gone by the name of Charlie before. Let me guess: what's her real name? Charlotte? Let's go ahead and call her Charlotte-Anne and be done with it.

Palace of Lost Memories by CJ Archer

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook - evidently the first of a series although I did not realize that going into it, which annoyed the hell out of me. The 'After the Rift Book One' label on the book cover was hardly intelligible in the ad offering the audiobook for sale at a discount, so I didn't notice it. I picked up the book because it sounded really interesting. Had I known it was first in a series I probably would not have picked it up because I would have known that it was inevitably a prologue in which no mystery was solved and the story would have gone nowhere beyond world building. Very few series really get me interested in following them. Typically, they're too long, too boring, and too unimaginative and derivative. I don't want to read the same story over and over with nothing but a few tweaks in between, which is what series are for the most part.

With a title about a palace of lost memories a reader naturally expects something mysterious and a resolution, but neither appeared. The story moved excruciatingly slowly and had way too much dillydallying, and instead of a mystery it came across as a romance, which I for one didn't appreciate at all. Nevertheless I kept listening in the hope that something interesting would show up to explain why all the denizens of the palace had memories which had been blanked prior to the point when the palace showed up. I never got that, and the story ended rather abruptly without even addressing the lost memories portion of it. It was teased several times, but it never was really discussed and it sure didn't get resolved because this is a series and the author has to stretch it out to milk the readers for as much cash as she can. I do not appreciate that, and I do not support books like that.

The book began - and despite being first person it was read pretty decently by Marian Hussey - with the mystery of a large place suddenly arising out of nowhere with no sign of anyone building it. That ought to have caused a sensation of curiosity and even fear among the locals, but inexplicably it didn't. Everyone just seemed to accept that this was normal despite the story having done nothing to introduce or establish any magical elements or precedents.

What was even more odd though was that no one seemed to have ever heard of this king or his palace or at least knew nothing about him. It was like a magical palace plopping down from nowhere was a normal thing in this neighborhood. What, no one owned the land it appeared on? No one had an issue with that?! No one - not even the local nobility - knew anything about the king or his past so they could fill in the blanks for the palace personnel?

The only mystery that this story focused on was that of a Lady - the king's fiancée, evidently - being poisoned and the only person who could cure her was the father of the main character, Josie. Josie was a midwife with physican skills who assisted her father, a doctor, but who was, as we were constantly reminded, ineligible to be a doctor herself because she was a woman. This is how Josie lucked-in to become a persona grata at the palace, yet despite her frequently coming through for them with treatments and cures, the king never once upped and changed the law so that she could be a doctor. That was something I'd expected to happen in this story, and I was disappointed that it didn't.

The other oddity about the novel was that Josie and her father were supposedly well-known and liked in the town which at times seems like a village and at others like a city. For example, despite being beloved and knowing the town like the back of her hand, at one point Josie perceives that she's being followed and runs off, switching directions randomly to escape and ends up lost in a very sordid part of town, where apparently no one knows her and she doesn't know this area at all! It made no sense given the cozy view of the 'village' we'd had before. Worse, the guy who is following her is purportedly not a bad guy, yet he doesn't lift a finger to help her in her predicament. Again, it made no sense.

The book description, evidently once again written by some dickhead who never read the book claims, "In the search for the truth, Josie is drawn deeper into danger, and the answers she seeks might shake the very foundations of the kingdom." No, she's never actually in any danger until the very close of the book, and that's resolved before you can even start to feel concerned for her. Besides, she's the main character and she's also telling the story in first person, so how can anything harmful possibly befall her? That's one more reason why first person is typically a fail for me. And nothing happens that even remotely threatens the very foundations of the kingdom. Once again, the blurb lies.

Add to all of this the rather dull characters and it makes me want to yawn. Josie's love interest, Captain Hammer may as well have been a hammer for all the emotion he exhibits and Josie is hardly any better, showing herself not to be smart, but to be impulsive and foolish as often as not. It's not someone I want to read any more about, and I lost any interest I'd initially had in the mystery of the lost memories. Do I want to keep reading a series that fails to actually address the main topic the series is supposed to be about? Do I want to be led by the nose, continually betrayed by an author who baits one thing and switches the entire story to another? No! I can't commend this as a worthy read at all.