Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Book Review of Charming (Pax Arcana #1), by Elliott James

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CharmingI borrowed Charming, By Elliott James, from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
John Charming isn’t your average Prince… 

He comes from a line of Charmings — an illustrious family of dragon slayers, witch-finders and killers dating back to before the fall of Rome. Trained by a modern day version of the Knights Templar, monster hunters who have updated their methods from chainmail and crossbows to kevlar and shotguns, he was one of the best. That is — until he became the abomination the Knights were sworn to hunt.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, he tends bar under an assumed name in rural Virginia and leads a peaceful, quiet life. One that shouldn’t change just because a vampire and a blonde walked into his bar… Right?

Review:
Not bad, it was amusing. John had lots of witty comments that made me laugh. I was really impressed with how well thought out the magic system was and I liked the characters (especially the side characters). So, I’m not sad to have spent the time to read the book. But I also had problems with it.

My main one [this may be a spoiler, but it’s so predicable I don’t consider it so] is that with all the available enemies—new vampire queens, three different knight-like orders, werewolves, nagas, etc—and all the threats they could pose, the primary challenge here basically came down to who owns the right to a particular woman’s sex.

I use the word cliché in my reviews a lot. It’s one of my strongest insults to hurl at a book. And come on, a man willing to kill rather than loose “his woman” is just about as over-used and clichéd as they get. I love that Sig was a large framed, strong woman, still considered beautiful and didn’t wallow in her own body image issues. But she was still made weak in regard to relationships and good ol’ toxic patriarchy was wheeled out with thoughtless ease by the author. *sigh* And it doesn’t even look to be over, since I smell the whiff of a love triangle in future books. So we can keep arguing over who gets have access to Sig.

On a slightly similar note, i.e. dismissing women, John’s motley crew that this series is based on…yeah, it’s SIG’S crew. But you know, a man came on the scene so we need to shift our focus, right?

Anyhow, outside of those complaints I liked the book. I didn’t really feel the threat of the vampires or the knights hunting John. They were all just kind of in the background, never really creating any significant threat. John would occasionally attack them and have a pretty good fight scene, but then he could safely go home and the tension would drain away. But John had a fun narrative style, wasn’t and alpha A-hole. The side characters were fun and Sig was a woman I appreciated.

Book Review of Royal Street and River Road, by Suzanne Johnson

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I borrowed the first two books of Suzanne Johnson‘s Sentinels of New Orleans series, Royal Street and River Road from my local library.

Royal Street

Description from Goodreads:
As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ’s boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.

While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

Review:
Entertaining, but lacking in pizzazz. This held my interest. I was never quite bored. But I was also never quite enthralled either. It felt a little flat. I thought Alex, the main love interest (there appear to be three) was a jerk. Jake, the second, was a caricature of a boy scout and Jean, the third, was the most interesting but least likely. Further, I saw no reason for three possible love interest, who all saw some mystery quality to this mousy, bland wizard. DJ, herself, never grabbed me. She seemed capable enough, for all she was under trained and kept in the dark for her whole life. But I just never related to her or cared for her much.

The fact that the events of the book happened during hurricanes Katrina and Rita could have been interesting, and I’ll admit it was handled respectfully, but I also felt like it was never fully engaged with. It was a plot device and little more and DJ came out of it amazingly unscathed.

The conclusion felt a little deus ex machina and rushed. But I’ll be reading the second in the series, so not a total bust.

River RoadDescription from Goodreads:
Hurricane Katrina is long gone, but the preternatural storm rages on in New Orleans. New species from the Beyond moved into Louisiana after the hurricane destroyed the borders between worlds, and it falls to wizard sentinel Drusilla Jaco and her partner, Alex Warin, to keep the preternaturals peaceful and the humans unaware. But a war is brewing between two clans of Cajun merpeople in Plaquemines Parish, and down in the swamp, DJ learns, there’s more stirring than angry mermen and the threat of a were-gator.

Wizards are dying, and something—or someone—from the Beyond is poisoning the waters of the mighty Mississippi, threatening the humans who live and work along the river. DJ and Alex must figure out what unearthly source is contaminating the water and who—or what—is killing the wizards. Is it a malcontented merman, the naughty nymph, or some other critter altogether? After all, DJ’s undead suitor, the pirate Jean Lafitte, knows his way around a body or two.

It’s anything but smooth sailing on the bayou as the Sentinels of New Orleans series continues.

Review:
My opinion of this book was much like that of the first in the series. I enjoyed it but found it a little on the flat side. Granted, less here than in the previous book, as there wasn’t so much time dedicated to self-discovery and whinging on DJ’s part. But there was still a lot of wandering about, going on dates, eating, etc, that slowed the pace.

Similarly, I’m still baffled about why we need three men actively pursuing her and the introduction of two more that will likely try in the future. It’s becoming a bit like a harem and I find that annoying and distracting. Especially since this isn’t primarily a romance, and she isn’t really all that impressive.

The mystery was interesting and kept my attention, though I thought having someone die because he was enthralled to the villain was an exact repeat of book one and the motivation for the murder seemed a bit weak. Lastly, there were three unaccounted-for years between the first book and this one. That’s a lot of time to pass without the reader knowing what happened. Ostensibly, DJ should have grown and improved at her job in that time. In fact, that seemed the only reason to let so much time pass. But she still seemed be floundering and hanging on by the skin of her teeth and all the men in her life seemed to have just been on pause for that time because they picked up exactly where there were left at the end of the first book, three years earlier.

All in all, I liked it enough to keep reading the series (my library has the first four), but not enough to call it a new favorite or anything.

elysian fields cover

Description from Goodreads:
An undead serial killer comes for DJ in this thrilling third installment of Suzanne Johnson’s Sentinels of New Orleans series

The mer feud has been settled, but life in South Louisiana still has more twists and turns than the muddy Mississippi.

New Orleanians are under attack from a copycat killer mimicking the crimes of a 1918 serial murderer known as the Axeman of New Orleans. Thanks to a tip from the undead pirate Jean Lafitte, DJ Jaco knows the attacks aren’t random—an unknown necromancer has resurrected the original Axeman of New Orleans, and his ultimate target is a certain blonde wizard. Namely, DJ.

Combatting an undead serial killer as troubles pile up around her isn’t easy. Jake Warin’s loup-garou nature is spiraling downward, enigmatic neighbor Quince Randolph is acting weirder than ever, the Elders are insisting on lessons in elven magic from the world’s most annoying wizard, and former partner Alex Warin just turned up on DJ’s to-do list. Not to mention big maneuvers are afoot in the halls of preternatural power.

Suddenly, moving to the Beyond as Jean Lafitte’s pirate wench could be DJ’s best option.

Review:
DJ gets targeted by a preternatural murder plot, beat up a lot, should be dead, but survives by the skin of her teeth and adds to her (now alarmingly large and annoyingly pointless) harem. So, it’s basically the same plot as every other book in this series. Amusing, but not particularly deep or moving.

Under Wraps

Book Review of Under Wraps (Underworld Detection Agency #1), by Hannah Jayne

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Under WrapsI borrowed a copy of Hannah Jayne‘s Under Wraps from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Sophie Lawson 32, human narrator, sees through magic veils, works for the Underworld Detective Agency below San Francisco Police HQ. Her boss Pete is a handsome werewolf – missing. Her roommate Nina is a fashionista vampire with teen nephew Vlad. Her new partner gorgeous detective Parker Hayes is not what he seems. A killer takes eyes, blood, hearts – is Sophie next?

Review:
You know, I read a lot and I don’t like everything I read. In fact, I seem to be having a stunningly bad year for books. Ive read very few books that I thought wonderful (though those that I loved, I really LOVED), a lot of mediocre ones and have DNFed more books than ever. But there haven’t been many that I can say that I thought the writing was fine but I disliked every character in the book. I can say that about Under Wraps. I have to even.

I thought the heroine was whiny and TSTL, and her primary characteristic seemed to be her ineptitude. I thought the hero a complete jerk-face. He was smug, sexist, patronizing and constantly insulting. The BFF was just as bad. She was basically heartless, unrepentant when her actions hurt others and used the heroine as a doormat. The sole character in the book I liked died a pointless death that contributed nothing to the plot.

Speaking of plot, the whole books is supposed to be solving a mystery. But instead of solving it it just reaches a point where the villain steps forward and conveniently explains the whole thing. No agency on the part of the heroine contributed to solving the crime. She spends far more time inexplicably mooning over the man who laughs at her when she is angry than contributing anything useful.

Lastly, I have to address the cover. I understand the challenge of stock photography and cover designers, etc. But this cover is a straight up LIE. This book is not an Urban Fantasy with a kick-butt heroine, as the cover suggests. She never holds a sword. The closest she comes if being threatened by one. And the character that model is supposed to represent is a mousy administrative assistant who shows more passion about being called a secretary than anything else. Plus, she describes herself as having ‘Brillo pad curls,’ “5’5″ when standing on a phone book,” with pale skinned, and explicitly says she doesn’t look good in a leather bustier. There is literally nothing on that cover that isn’t wrong.