Author: Hailey Edwards
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
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 chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!
This novel would seem to borrow rather liberally from the TV series Lost Girl (the first season of which I recommend) in that the main protagonist is a young half-fae woman living a world where there are dark and light fae. Yes, "fae". It would seem that rather a large number of writers in this genre are too embarrassed to call them fairies - or even faeries! Why that is, I have no idea. Call 'em what they are, I say!
I was on-board with the idea because the blurb made it sound interesting - which technically means nothing more than it did its advertising job, let's face it! My thinking was that if this was reminiscent of Lost Girl then I certainly wouldn’t mind reading it. The difference here turns out to be that the main female protagonist, Thierry, is not a succubus. Although she is having an inappropriate relationship with an incubus, so maybe that counts?! OTOH, inappropriate and incubus are really mutually tautological, aren’t they?
This is also apparently "Book One" in the inevitable series, because why write one when you can milk it for many more? OTOH, a precious few series are actually worth reading, and maybe this will be one of those rare exceptions. I do seem to have lucked-out, in that this is the first one in this particular series. That's rather a novelty for someone who is a highly-acclaimed master of dropping into a series in progress without even realizing it until I start reading chapter one. Talking of which, at least this novel does not have a prologue, so I commend the author for that. I also thank her for this line on page twenty: "At worst I had suggested he boink a flamethrower who might flambé his manly bits." That was a LOL, right there.
Her training partner, now she's graduated fae academy (Ooh! Fae Academy! Now there's an idea! You heard it here first, folks!), is named Shaw. He was her instructor at the academy, and now he's also giving her OTJ training. I'll bet! Their first job together is to pick up an Ourobouros, a simple task, but it seems they've found something deadly, which spits fire, so the action suddenly heated up, and we learned something rather interesting about Thierry.
Also, here was the second time the author used "nape" instead of the whole phrase, "nape of the neck". Being totally anal and deeply in love with the English language (much to my wife's jealousy, I admit), I actually looked that up, thinking nape was a word - like 'neck' itself, for that matter - which could be employed in ways other than referring to a person's neck, such as to mean a small area, as in 'neck of the woods', or as in 'bottleneck', but nape by itself actually does mean the same as nape of the neck - meaning that the latter phrase is a tautology. I learned something new!
All you need is 'nape', so I confess I'm officially impressed. Not only does the author proudly use accented 'e's in words like flambé, but she's also evidently literate (despite using "chaise lounge" instead of "chaise longue" for which I forgive her!). So at this point I started really appreciating this novel. Of course, there was still time for it to go to the proverbial hell in the proverbial hand-basket, but I decided to enjoy it while it lasted and hope it lasted until page 101!
Yes, this is a short novel - only 97 pages (from chapter one to the end). I don’t have a word count, but maybe it’s a novella. This does seem to be the trend these days. There are sixteen chapters, so short chapters, too. Hopefully, I thought, all of them will be as appealing as the first four! With little exception, I wasn't disappointed. I think the novel could have been a bit better, and I certainly was turned off by the romance angle (why does a female character always have to be drawn with the weakness of needing someone? Why is she never enough by herself?
On the plus side, the romance was very muted, for which I commend the author. On the minus side, I have to say that this fae story lost several Brownie points (Brownie? Get it?!) with me for following the juvenile Harry Potter route of having a magical society, but making it exactly like a non-magical one. There is a "police" academy in this novel, from which Thierry graduated; then she gets OTJ training, and when they return from a case, they have to fill out the paperwork. Seriously? Paperwork? Why? Why ruin a really good story by sticking it in such dreary and mundane mud? Because it’s easier to do this than to actually build a world? How lazy is that?
I've never understood the point of this at all. What is this paperwork? Where does it go? Who requires it? What friggin' purpose can it possibly serve? Why is there so much of it? Why is this society organized exactly like ours? You know, I avoid werewolf stories for this (and other) reasons, but they're not as bad as vampire stories. At least wolves in real life do form packs and have leaders, but what about vampires? Where in the name of Dracula's aged and wrinkled ass did the idea of an hierarchical vampire society come from? Who came up with the need for kings and queens and sheriffs? Honestly? Why? I blame Doctor Polidori.
Seriously, think about this in the human context to begin with. We humans have to learn a lot of things. We have to learn to walk and to speak, and we have to get an education so we can hopefully get a decent job which will in turn allow us the freedom to do the stuff we really want to do in life, which is write novels, of course! This is all a part of our society, but you know what we don’t have to do? We don’t have to learn how to actually be a human!
We do not have to learn how to grow. We don’t have to learn how to make thoughts go through our brain. We don’t have to learn how to digest food, or how to smile or how to socialize and make friends (assuming all our circuits are wired normally). These things are part and parcel of being human. Why then must supernatural beings have to learn how to be supernatural beings? Why must innately magical beings have to learn how to be magical? That's like sending us to school to learn how to be human. Frankly, it’s bullshit and completely nonsensical.
That's why I'm not a huge fan of this kind of story, and especially not when it carries with it the additional baggage of tropes like vampire royalty or, in this particular case, fae police who have to fill out paperwork! Who pays their salary? Whence cometh the money - and money to pay a bounty for a chimera pelt for goodness sakes?! I've encountered this trope time and time again and I can't tell you how many times I've wished dearly for a writer to take the road less traveled instead of trudging along behind all the other sheep.
Actually, you know what this novel reminded me of? It reminded me of an hilarious movie titled The Kentucky Fried Movie. It was a series of skits parodying TV and movies, and in it there was a segment which was a spoof of the spectacular Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon. In the original movie, we see a character named Lee, played by his namesake, teaching a boy to put his soul into his punches. In the spoof, we see the Lee parody character teaching a guard dog how to bark properly - putting emotional content into it! That's exactly what this is. No one needs to teach a dog how to bark - quite the contrary: a lot of dog-owners spend time telling their charge to quit barking! We don’t need to teach supernatural characters to be what they are. If a tree falls in a forest, do we need to teach it to make a sound even when no one is there?!
This is where, as a reader, you have to decide: is this particular story worth swallowing down all the nauseating trope for the sake of enjoying the story? Normally, you have to eat your greens - if you're smart and want to be healthy - before you can bask in the enjoyment of your desert, but with novels, you don't. You can go straight to desert if the writer lets you. I just wish more writers realized this! That said, this one was just over the wire and came down on the side of being a worthy read. Just! And that's how I ended-up rating it, but it isn't a novel which made we want to continue on and read a whole series.
