Street Magic – Caitlin Kittredge

I should have been looking for a Comfort Read for last Christmas. But this past Christmas bore no resemblance whatsoever to any other Christmas in living memory (in a word, it sucked), so I drifted with my whim and landed almost randomly on this book on the Kindle. I figured I’d start it and see how it went.

How it went was almost in one sitting. I was hooked quickly and dragged along for the ride. And it was quite a ride.

Taken separately, the component parts of this book aren’t promising. The main characters are a tough-as-nails-here-I’ll-prove-it 28-year-old female London copper, Pete Connelly (if I told you what Pete is short for she’d kill me) and Jack Winter, former punk rock singer, current junkie, and all-around (*pause to review possible epithets for one clean enough for a review*) Grade-A jerk. The story is different from other urban fantasies I’ve read, though there are elements that ring all kinds of Dresden-esque and Peter-Grant-esque bells (like the ability of the heroes to withstand a horrific amount of physical pan and abuse and come out of it making smart-ass remarks). One thing this book (this series, I’m finding) has that the others don’t is language. By which I do not mean skilful use of adjective or metaphor or turn of phrase; all three series do have that to one degree or another. No, what Street Magic has that the others don’t, quite, is sheer unadulterated potty mouth. I’m not unduly sensitive to filthy language – heaven knows my mouth in these past few months especially, as the universe has consistently showed me its heel, has been worthy of an Orbit gum commercial. But even at my worst I don’t think I’ve used the f-bomb quite as often and as creatively as it is used by the characters here. And I definitely haven’t used the (not to be coy, but I don’t choose to ever use the word) “c-word” … and if I did it wouldn’t be in every other sentence, and probably not referring to male characters…. I still find that odd. And there’s plenty more besides … It’s a little like sandpaper on the eyeballs.

Still. Despite all of this, I found myself completely involved. I like Pete. I even like Jack – and I feel for him, and want him to be ok. More, I want to know how it is that he reappears in Pete’s life after twelve years. I wanted to know how it was going to come back to, literally, haunt her.

It all begins with a missing child. Kidnapped children are rarely going to return home the same as they used to be, but this situation is something else again. Much as Pete wants to deny it, there is more than just a human psycho involved in this – there’s a supernatural agency at work, and that is going to take even more explaining away than her confidential informant is.

And that there is one of the problems with the book. When the sh – er, when everything hits the fan, it demands Pete’s time, at the expense of her official duties. Her partner has to do some heavy-duty covering up for her, and for the most part without knowing what he’s covering up, and it’s all handled a bit more casually than it ought to be – by Pete, by her partner, and by her superiors. Or maybe not, considering the second book.

Still, the setting was great; the Big Bad is both very big and very bad, with a few elements that were thoroughly chilling. And while I admit I have a soft spot for the classic Knight in Shining Armor hero, reading about protagonists as thoroughly messed up as these two are is a gritty dose of realism, and – since I can close the book and not worry about the pain or odors et cetera – a strangely refreshing change of pace. Not for everyday, this – more like the grungy, tattered outfit you dig out of your closet when you’re headed to a punk rock concert.

Not that I’ve ever been to a punk rock concert.

Or ever will.

But now I know what one is like.

 

 

Whispers Under Ground – Ben Aaronovitch

Peter Grant.

I could almost make that my entire review.

I have a friend I met when we both worked at Barnes & Noble many years ago. She went off to school and then to New York to seek her fortunes, and she is a) blessed with a great many friends and b) an even worse correspondent than I am, so we don’t email or call or any of that very often. Now and then, though, if we’re going to be in the same city at the same time, we get together, and it’s almost as though the time since the last time we met up never existed – we find our old footing and have a terrific time.

Peter Grant is a little like that. Months go by; he doesn’t call, doesn’t write, but then he bursts back into my life as if he never left and I have a few hours of tremendous fun with him. As fictional characters go, Peter is one of those I would most like to meet, share a pint and a kebab, go to a movie with. Tagging along on a murder investigation is fun, too, even when it involves a schlep through the sewers; there’s where the “fictional” part comes in handy, as my schlep doesn’t involve the stink.

I loved this book, because I got to hang out with Peter – and, yay, Lindsey, and Nightingale, and (briefly) Toby and Molly and Dr. Walid. I loved seeing Lindsey growing in her new role and continuing to recover from the events of the first book. I loved seeing her relationship with Peter beginning to heal as well. I loved the dialogue, both internal – Peter to reader – and between characters. And of course I loved the Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings and D&D and other geeky allusions liberally salted throughout the book – the quickest and surest way to my heart is to toss off a reference and let it float on by without explaining it into the ground: give me credit for being as clever and/or geeky as you are (or at least as skilful with a search engine).

Lesley stuck her head through the door, spotted us and came in. “Have you seen how much that man can eat?”

“He is a halfling,” I said, which just got me blank looks from the pair of them.

The only thing I didn’t love about this book, which brought it to a less-than-five-star rating (but probably more than four) was the plot. A young man is murdered in the London Underground, and the unusual murder weapon that Peter locates leads him and his cohort (because I wager he’d love to be said to have a cohort) off on a hunt – through London’s tunnels and sewers via the art world, and don’t think I’m not making that a metaphor in my head – for what may be a whole community of people (of one sort or another) who rarely see the light of day. It’s not a criticism that there were no pyrotechnics on the scale of the other two books; explosions and riots and so forth would be a bit difficult to realistically insert into every single book, and something a bit more low-key (though still plenty adventuresome) was called for, I think, in this third volume.

I just figured it out: my problem with the book – which is only a problem in the way a small vanilla bean Coolatta is a problem: a large would be better – is that it feels a little like the stereotypical middle book in a trilogy. Character development continues; more characters are introduced (another reviewer squeed quietly about the possibility that a sort of Peculiar Crimes Unit is forming around Peter and Nightingale, what with Lindsey (I love the progression of her character) and other developments herein – and my heart have a little squee of its own. Yes, please); plot lines are carried over from the previous book as investigation continues into the “Little Crocodiles”; and the book ends with a wonderfully mysterious and tantalizing tip-off for the latter.

From the description: “No, the FBI has sent over a crack agent to help. She’s young, ambitious, beautiful . . . and a born-again Christian apt to view any magic as the work of the devil. Oh yeah—that’s going to go well.” Huh? When does her born-again anti-magicness come into play? I remember nothing of that. That would have actually been an interesting wrinkle, but – actually, that’s another small drawback for me. Special Agent Kimberly Reynolds of the FBI (“Ooh!”) is sent to London to assist in the murder investigation I mentioned a few pages back there, because the victim was the son of a US ambassador. She is sharp and competent – and also, compared to the armed-with-a-baton British force, a bit gun-happy, and more than a bit out of her element, between the foreign country component and the supernatural component. But she remains largely undeveloped, almost an afterthought, remaining on the fringes for the most part – and then she goes home. Which could mean she’ll be back…

Because I exhibited the persistence and annoyingness of a horsefly, I was granted (heh) this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review – many, many thanks.

Related articles

• Peter Grant Book 2 – Moon Over Soho (outlondish.wordpress.com)
• The Adventures of Peter Grant begin….Rivers of London (outlondish.wordpress.com)
• Moon over Soho – Ben Aaronovitch (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)
• Peter Grant Book 3 – Whispers Under Ground (outlondish.wordpress.com)
• The Folly – Seriously: the Folly

 

Prehistoric Clock – Robert Appleton

Sooner or later, clockwork requires each piece to accept its nature or break. Hearts are no different.

I have limited experience with steampunk. Most of what I’ve stumbled across has been romance of some sort or other, which is fine in its way. But that’s why I kept expecting someone to leap into bed with someone in this book. There is a romance element – but a PNR this ain’t. (*muted rejoicing*)

What this is is the story of Professor Cecil Reardon, whose wife and young son were killed in a terrible accident – and he wants them back. He has been working to conquer all obstacles to the time travel necessary to go back and save them. The work is kept undercover; to keep them from interfering, he is happy to allow the Leviacrum Council to see him as having become a doddering old codger broken by his tragedies. He is getting close, when one night -

The same night that Lord Garrett Embrey goes on the lam from the Leviacrum Council. He took the floor to protest, in the strongest terms, the unjust executions of his father and uncle, and when his vocal dissent accelerates the Council’s intentions to put him out of the way, he runs out into the night -

Tyrannosaurus rex, a theropod from the Late Cretaceous of North America, pencil drawing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Which is also the same night that sees Airship Officer Verity Champlain into the port of London. She and her crew have seen some harrowing action, leaving her the senior officer aboard, and she and her largely African crew are looking forward to decompressing and untangling exactly what has happened to them and to the Empire, and what will happen next. And ice cream. Their airship sails into London’s night -

And the night is split by a massive concussion, a blinding light. When people gradually come to, they discover that they are where they had been, in the heart of London – but they are no longer when they had been. The blocks of London town where they happened to be have been excised and transported back – to the age of dinosaurs.

The result is the best dinosaurs vs. humans story I’ve ever read.

Not that there have been so very many of those.

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Live Experience (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Conspiracy, top-secret government plots, dinosaurs stampeding through London streets; factions emerging and lives coming under threat in the heat of emotion; loyalty and betrayal and, yes, a romance – all the folk dropped together in the midst of the prehistoric jungle don’t quite get along, and even the prospect of getting back home doesn’t pull them together. And if they do get home … then what? The velociraptor is out of the bag, the experiment in time travel has gone beyond the drawing board, and the government is going to be all over it.

Skillful writing, nice characterizations, a really wonderful airship, and some truly awful dinosaurs and people both: well done.

Related articles

• The Coolest Airship Pictures You’ve Ever Seen (io9.com)

 

Dark Remains – Sean McMahon

I won a copy of this book through LibraryThing’s Member Giveaways. I always feel badly about not being able to heap praise on one of these. I enjoyed the beginning… It’s a powerful idea – two young children left on their own in 1842 London, their comfortable early life contrasting hideously with being reduced to prayer and scavenging to get by on the filthy, terrifying waterfront.

Unfortunately, I first got angry at the adult characters, and then at the writer, and then just became baffled, and it all went downhill from there.

The children – Maggie, 13, and her little brother, ten-year-old Thomas – are alone in the world because their father, a Chartist activist, was caught, convicted, and transported, and their mother was broken by the stress of it and died. At the beginning of the book the kids decide they should try to locate Mr. Turner, mentioned in their father’s letters as someone who could help the family. Why did their mother never go to him? Pride? Regardless, it’s now find this gentleman or turn to a life of crime, or die, and the two set off into the mean streets of London.

The streets aren’t the only things that are mean: the children are trapped by a group of very young thieves straight out of Oliver Twist and no matter how hard they try can’t seem to escape them; though they have nothing themselves, it’s their own selves which have the potential to be valuable to the group, as Maggie can participate in a seduction-robbery of some rich drunken toff. Finally, though, they find the old gentleman, only to see him kidnapped by scoundrels and end up right back with the street gang … after which they and one of the gang, Jack, are taken up by a sweet little old lady and the story goes from Oliver Twist to Hansel and Gretel.

Honestly, it was kind of a mess.

The beginning, as I said, had some hope in it. It was a good depiction of the vicious circle of homelessness: you have no place to wash and nothing clean to wear, so “decent” folk, including the police, automatically assume the worst of you and want nothing but to be shut of you, and so you and your clothes become dirtier and more ragged, and any opportunity for anything better slips further and further away. But before long I was just utterly confused as to what story this was trying to tell. The story from Maggie’s point of view is intercut with her dreams in the present tense – effectively nightmarish – and also bits and pieces the reader could not otherwise know from assorted letters, articles, and other papers from other sources. A good idea – but unfortunately a bit scattershot in execution.

The middle of the book, as I mentioned, takes a wild fairy tale turn as the kids are scooped up by a Countess who promises to give them everything they could possibly imagine and then some, but who just might not be as benevolent as she seems. It was a bizarre turn for the story to take, and almost trivialized by being a detour, popping up a good ways in and wrapped up tidily well before the end in a muted climax that featured a strange sort of deus-ex-machina.

I very quickly lost patience with the children’s father, Thomas Power. You’ve got a cause and a fire in your belly and you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good? Dandy. Go for it – unless you have a fragile wife and two young children who, if they lose you, will be reduced to abject penury. All I could think every time the narrative cut in one of the father’s letters was How dare you? How dare you put yourself into a position in which you abandon your family to almost certain death? How could you? Whether it was thoughtlessness, overconfidence in himself and his wife and Turner, or blind zeal, the end result was his wife’s grim and bitter death and the deep suffering of his children, and there was no amount of yay-he’s-a-hero-for-the-Cause that was going to alleviate that. And, really, I don’t know much more about the Chartists (or being prisoner in Van Diemen’s land) than I did before I read the book.

The reason the children’s mother earned my anger is something of a spoiler, so we’ll just take it as read. It’s the least of my problems with the book. It could be argued that the fact that I was angry with the characters means they were real enough to spark an emotion in me; it could also be argued that they were written as idiots and it was their thoughtless stupidity that made me angry. Which – well, actually, that means they do in fact have a lot in common with a lot of real people, so – go them.

It was the writing, both in its rambliness and its grim and bitter need for editing, which made me a bit angry with the writer. I was annoyed with the weird left turn into lurid sensationalism; I was much more annoyed that the children quite simply did not speak like children. On the death of their mother:

Maggie (13 years old): “She had the churchyard cough and suffered terribly for a while. We were thrown out of our lodgings because the sewing work she brought home didn’t amount to much, and we couldn’t pay the rent. I tried to help, but I think she got so very tired with the illness, and she couldn’t keep up with the work. We then found shelter in an old fisherman’s hut down by the river, but her cough grew worse. She was miserable and full of despair. She hated how her life had turned out and hated that we were forced to take up begging…”

~~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

Thomas (10 years old): “Right after she died, I used to think I saw her face everywhere. Every woman of her age seemed to have her face. … I used to see her face around the market, pushing barrows, scavenging around the waterside, even walking the streets in fancy clothes. I’d stop and stare at all these ladies. But after a few seconds of staring, I knew it couldn’t be her – and the real face of the woman I was looking at would appear once more.”

These are not the words of children, even well-brought-up Victorian children. Now and then there was a childish grammatical error or something of the sort, but largely the kids never sounded like kids. The dialogue of the urchin Jake, who had had no education whatsoever and was (I think) supposed to be a proper little Cockney brat, differed very little in the main from the examples above, though now and then there was a text-stopping insertion like “take a butchers” – from zero to full-on Cockney and back again in a sentence, which brought me to a screeching halt every time as I tried to adjust. Everyone – from the French Countess to Cockney Jack to Blake to Mr. Turner – sounded pretty much the same, except for occasional dropped-in stereotypical words.

Did I mention the two main kids were well-brought-up Victorian children? Does the line (spoken by Maggie) “There might be blood, guys” sound Victorian? “Guys”?? Really?

Most of all, though, because it should have been the easiest thing to fix, I was annoyed with the slipshod spelling, grammar, and punctuation:

- “Say what you want, Gentlemen” (why the capital?)
- “Like outlaws they laid low” (what is a low, and where did they lay it?)
- “Eventually, however, he came to heal.” (Should, in case it isn’t clear, be “came to heel” – not even getting into the connotations of the phrase)
- “the dinning room” (*flinch*)
- “those hated, London streets” (why the comma?)
- “Maggie wondered around the empty house” (yes, it should be “wandered”: not the same word)
- and my favorite: “‘What about, Jack?’” (which wasn’t a query to Jack about what he might be referring to, but was supposed to be a query about him: “What about Jack?”)

Say what you want, Gentlemen, about nit-picking, but truly, really, honestly – commas are important. In that last example the comma creates a completely different sentence from what was intended. “You know what I mean” just doesn’t cut it when this is something people are expected to pay money for – there’s really no excuse for it. I just found an old review of mine, and I’m recycling a line from it: when there are as many nits as this, it’s hard not to pick them.

No, wait – my favorite erratum might have actually been this, from one of Maggie’s nightmares: “Then up bobs a decapitated leg to the surface”. How, exactly, do you decapitate a leg? I think I actually gave a little cry of dismay at that one.

There were plenty of places where I found the choice of words questionable, such as:
- Referring to two men who just viciously beat up an apparently nice old man as “the younger gentlemen” (Is “gentlemen” really appropriate here?)
- “It informed them that their package of hope was lost” (– Er?)
- “Marie … thrust him into her arms to comfort him” (can you thrust someone into your own arms?)

And there was one place where I just sat and laughed for a second. The Countess requires of the children a promise that they won’t go to the folly. “How would we go about getting over there?” asks young Thomas. She tells him, in detail. Guess what happens.

A quick internet search doesn’t turn up any record of the emotional story of Marie Antoinette and Jacques (which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or wasn’t said to have happened). The other major historical character besides Marie Antoinette (with whom she was bizarrely yoked as a pair of heroines for the Countess) is real, but her background is never made explicit in the story; I don’t know if the reader is just supposed to know, or is intended to go searching. Author’s notes at the end of the book might have been added value here. It needed something. With a lot of work and a lot of cleaning up and a clearer focus, this could be good – there were places that weren’t bad, like the genuinely creepy nightmares.

I think that with some strong guidance and – do I really need to say a masterful editor? – this could have been a fine book. As it is, I, sadly, have a bit of regret for the time I spent on it.

 

The Man in the Queue – Josephine Tey

After a long absence, Alan Grant returns to my life. (Which is a different way of saying “I haven’t read this in a long time”.) It’s obvious that Josephine Tey didn’t originally intend to write mystery novels: not to in any way belittle mystery novels, which I love, but there is an intelligent uniqueness to her story and her writing that is a pure joy, an approach to the task which is fresh and unique.

Alan Grant (whom I cannot call by his last name, and therefore with whom I will probably become a bit familiar as I talk about these books; hopefully he wouldn’t mind me calling him Alan) is … lovely.  Also lovely: the Pamela Patrick cover art on my copy.  I love this painting (drawing) – I think it’s just about perfect.

A friend noted in her recent review of a different edition that she was made a bit uneasy by the oft-repeated word “dago”. I decided to read this on the spur of the moment, and a little ways in remembered that part of the discussion that followed her review, and was a little surprised that I had not encountered the epithet. Before long, Alan Grant dubs the mysterious suspect “the Levantine” – and a minute later I started wondering if that was where “dago” used to be; I questioned it because it didn’t seem to mean the same thing. By the time I finished the book and realized that “dago” had never appeared, it was clear that at some point a more politically correct edit had taken place. Unfortunately the edit was more politically than typographically correct – there were a number of spelling errors. It also wasn’t terribly correct topographically, as the Levant consists of “The countries bordering on the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to Egypt”, which I think would be a much different sort of complexion than the descriptions of our lad imply.

It’s a lovely, gorgeously written story, this, and I’m glad that the casual racism of another time has been erased (though I’m interested in the mechanics of that). It isn’t so much a Whodunnit, in which the reader can follow along and figure out who the killer is – I’m fairly sure that’s impossible, as the story is written. But it is a terrific Howdunnit, as well as a terrific Howsolvdit – a portrait of a very good and unique detective doggedly following up any thread to find answers to who had the opportunity (and means, and motive) to stab The Man in the Queue. It’s a psychological study, in a way – how people (or at least 1920′s Londoners) can be standing in line in front of or behind or nearby someone who is murdered, and never see a thing; the mindset of a very intelligent detective relentlessly hunting his suspect, and how that changes when the suspect become a man to him; the mindset of the hunted man, whose friend is dead, whether he was the one who killed him or not.

I can’t think of another detective – perhaps not even another fictional character – quite like Alan Grant. He is thoughtful, insightful, brilliant, and could have been anything – and has chosen to take his “flair” into the field of homicide investigation. It’s not quite fair to the poor killers (which is as it should be). His thought processes are clearly illustrated, and it’s a pleasure to follow them. It’s also a pleasure that, while he’s clearly more intelligent than his colleagues, they aren’t idiots – the police are uniformly (pardon the pun) depicted as sharp and hard-working. Nice for a change.

(Reading “Ray Marcable” did not make an impact for a chapter or so, and then I let it sound in my head – and groaned. She wouldn’t … Oh. She would. But surely the British Theatah wouldn’t / didn’t…? I mean, that’s just awful.)

 

The Music of the Spheres – Elizabeth Redfern

This felt strangely familiar, or perhaps inevitable would be a better description. There are the down-trodden though spirited prostitutes of 18th–19th century London. There are the men who are persecuted for preferring boys. There are the spheres within spheres of clandestine work by and against the government – this time surrounding the aftermath of the Revolution in France. (Napoleon is waiting in the wings.) A character’s death which seemed probable was inevitable; the main character, Jonathan Absey, has a dogged determination to discover his daughter’s murderer which combines with a growing disregard for his own safety, professionally and physically, which has predictable results. (The man has some of the most truly, consistently terrible luck of anyone in the world, his or ours.)

I enjoyed parts of this book very much. The entire astronomical angle was fascinating – that strange cross between poetry and dreams and hard science, and the elusive planet they believed had to exist between Mars and Jupiter – the formulae were only slightly tortured, and while it might be something very like the “Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln and Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, etc.” string of correlations, it’s still a fascinating thing. Despite some of the well-worn tropes that went into him, Jonathan’s half-brother Alexander had some real originality to him, and I enjoyed him and his past and his circumscribed world. Poor man – his luck isn’t much better than his brother’s. There were some good ideas for the espionage aspect. The setting was not done poorly; it was very vivid in places. The unfortunate thing was that it just felt like so many of the gaslit mysteries I’ve read. And the shocking revelation of who the killer was … wasn’t that shocking. Not as shocking as some of what happened to minor characters, at least. I had hoped that there was a sequel, perhaps, in which Alexander and Jonathan search for a person who goes missing near the end of the book – but I guess the little part of me that became invested in the book and its world will just have to go on worrying about him.

Honestly, I think it was largely the sheer unrelenting bad fortune Absey experienced that made this less than a favorite. Blow after blow after blow … in a way it’s reminiscent of Harry Dresden taking beating after beating and still plowing forward. But Harry has much more of a sense of humor, and so do the Dresden Files. And that makes all the difference.

http://www.universetoday.com/14869/was-there-a-planet-between-mars-and-jupiter/

(Various editions have had some really lovely covers, as above and – )

 

Alternate 1800′s – The Smoke Thief

They sneaked Shana Abé’s  Smoke Thief by me in the fantasy section – had it been where it (sort of) properly belonged, in with the romances, I would never have cracked the cover.  But it was in fantasy, and had a great title, and the premise – a (beautiful, of course) young woman making her unique way in Georgian London as a jewel thief, who apparently steals the wrong jewel and is stalked by the (handsome, of course) owner – sounded like fun.  I like charming and accomplished fictional thieves.  Case in point: John Robie. 

And now Rue, the heroine of Smoke Thief.  I hated the historical-recap beginning; it bordered on purple, and is why I had as much trouble as I did getting into the story.  But it’s fairly necessary information, and soon over, followed by another vignette closer in time to the story, nicely showing the youth of and demonstrating the difficulties for the two main characters. 

And then we’re off at the gallop into the story, in which Clarissa Hawthorne has escaped a miserable childhood as a half-breed in a society which does not tolerate half-breeds.  She comes from a small, secret English village which is held by the drákon, who once were purely draconian in form and function but who have adapted to their perilous existence by learning human form.  Appearance of humanity isn’t acceptance of humanity, though – they are, of course, far superior to mere humans, and any intermingling of the races leads to, at best, ostracism for all concerned.  But it is generally held to be better to remain in the village as a despised adjunct to the clan than to flee the village and be hunted down and executed – because only the highest ranking of the drákon are allowed to leave, for fear of exposure. 

Except Clarissa has left, and is living the life she wants as Rue.  Until the Right Honourable Christoff René Ellery Langford, Earl of Chasen (aka Kit) shows up … He is the head of the tribe, and is responsible for a) retrieving the jewel stolen from the tribe (jewels having a similar effect on the drákon to drugs), and b) retrieving this person who somehow escaped from the tribe’s strictures.   When he finds out that the runner in question is a woman, and one who can successfully change shape, the priorities shift.  Centuries after they learned to take human shape, the drákon are finding it more difficult to shake it off: men normally grow into the ability to change their form to smoke and to drákon (dragon), but women seem to be losing the knack – and the head of the tribe must mate with a woman who can shift. 

Enter the romance portion of our story.  It’s a different twist on a classic romance theme – two (excessively beautiful) people who are going to marry (and, er, etc.) whether they both like it or not – and Rue very much doesn’t.  Except when she does.  She loved Kit when they were both children, but she was (almost) beneath his notice; now she hates and fears the idea of being dragged back to the village and forced to – best case scenario – go back to the restricted life she once had … and, worst case, face imprisonment or execution.  She’s forced into the union – but she likes it.  And happily ever etc.  Classic romance. 

But it was really not bad at all.  Some of the writing rose above what I expect of a romance, certainly, and even what I expect of a fantasy novel; the characters were believable and not paper cutouts.  I liked the conception of the drákon and how they were integrated into what would otherwise be a well-written romance novel – it takes it off the romance shelf in my library (which actually is just a shameful little section of “fiction”) and moves it, as Books & Co had it, firmly into fantasy. 

There are sequels; I probably won’t buy them new (sorry), but will at some point when I don’t feel like I’ve spent an absurd amount of money on myself (I just bought a laptop) put some effort into finding the ones I don’t have (one was at a library sale last year – yay).  What I wonder is whether there is so very much of a subgenre of romances with such strong fantasy elements.  I know there are lots – and lots – AND lots of vampires out there, but this … this was different.  I liked this.