2007 Book Log #67: Witchling, by Yasmine Galenorn

[annathepiper]

I'm tellin' ya, urban fantasies set in Seattle must be in these days or something. I've got mizkit's Walker Papers, of course, but now there's also Yasmine Galenorn's Sisters of the Moon series, not to mention Kat Richardson's Greywalker (which I've just started) and Richelle Mead's Succubus Blues (which is on my queue). It's enough to make a Seattle-based aspiring author with an urban fantasy (set in Seattle, of course) she's trying to sell want to weep. ;) Or at the very least, rewrite the damn thing to set it in Vancouver.

But in the meantime, I've read Witchling--book one of a trilogy featuring three half-fey sisters, and which comes across a lot as Charmed meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Mind you, I haven't actually seen Charmed, but I know enough to get the gist and that seems to be a pretty good way to peg this book. Unfortunately, for me at least, the mix wasn't quite workable. At times the story seemed to want to go the cutesy/charming direction: for example, the three sisters, as a result of their mixed heritage, aren't quite as secure in their abilities as they'd like. At other times, we got the gritty/dark direction: for example, in one sex scene with the protagonist and her Svartan (read: Drow-type dark elf) lover, the language and word choices are earthy and blunt, which didn't mesh well for me as a reader with the lighter tone of the sisters' erratic powers.

This particular book focuses on Camille, the witch sister of the trio, and she is the other major issue I have with the book. I freely admit that as a not-particularly-femmy girl utterly uninterested in makeup and corsets and bustiers, I had a hard time sympathizing with Camille enthusing over her sexy clothing and how makeup in the human world was infinitely superior to makeup in Otherworld; I kept finding myself impatient for her to get on with it and get back to tracking down the demons she and her sisters were supposed to be hunting. Ditto with her flirting or outright getting it on with not one, not two, but three different males of different species: Svartan, kitsune, and dragon-transformed-into-human-shape. I got very little sense of any of the males as individual characters. Mostly, it seemed like they were there to provide a) guard duty, b) fighting ability, and c) flirtation aimed at Camille, and this too mostly lost me as a reader.

And yet, I did read all the way through to the end. Galenorn is a local author, and when she threw in details of local color, I appreciated that they felt right. Once Camille actually let fly with some magic, that was admittedly neat; a scene where she accidentally calls up a harpy is suitably fraught with tension, and a visit to an ancient entity called Grandmother Coyote is nicely creepy as well. What we see of the other sisters--Delilah, the one with the computer talent, certainly seemed more interesting to geek-me, and newly-converted vampire Menolly hints at unexplored depths. I'll have to think about whether following up with the other sisters interests me overall enough to continue with the series; meanwhile, let's give this installment two and a half stars.

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

If you go to YA modern fantasy, you can also count Debbie Viguie & Nancy Holder's Wicked series, though the Seattle-ness feels slightly tacked-on.

[tvaddictgurl.livejournal.com]

I've read the second book in the series, Changeling, and liked it better than Witchling, though still not loving the series. I still wish the books had a darker slant to them (maybe Darkling will). I felt a little cheated in the end of Changeling in how the Big Bad of that book was defeated. I like her two cozy mystery series better, but I'll probably keep reading this series just because I've met her on several occasions and like her a lot as a person and I like supporting local authors.

I have Greywalker in my TBR pile and I've read Succubus Blues which I thought was a lot of fun.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I think this book would have worked a little better for me if it'd been more consistent with a darker tone. Eh well.

I'd seen another review that liked Changeling better, yeah; I'll think about whether I'll give that one a shot. Meanwhile I'm almost done with Greywalker and outright grinned at one particular local detail in it; I've got Succubus Blues on the queue, too. Glad to hear it was fun. :)