Lily Yu is a sensitive – she can sense magic. It’s a
useful skill and certainly helps her a lot as a detective on the San Diego
police force, though it hardly replaces good ol’ policing. Certainly not when a
brutal murder seems to have been committed by one of the Lupi – a werewolf.
The culprit seems immediately obvious – far too immediately obvious and an alibi addition certainly points to him being framed and, perhaps, the lupi being discredited. But the bodies start piling up, the evidence mounts and Lily isn’t sure who she can trust. Especially as dark ancient forces who everyone thinks are 400 years gone are muddying the waters
Then there’s her disturbing relationship with Rule, the
accused werewolf. The compelling, supernatural bond between them is certainly a
distraction.
Lily is a police detective who actually does detective
work and thinks and reasons and plans it through. It seems odd in a genre that
is full of PIs and cops and protagonists who work with the cops that these
traits should be so rare, but they are. Far too many detectives in this genre
rely entirely on their woo-woo to do all the work for them – or they just make
a nuisance of themselves until the big bad tries to kill them
But Lily investigates, she uses police procedures, she
cares about chain of evidence, she cares about warrants and laws and
legalities. She uses logic and thought and deduction and police work. She faces
office politics and has to navigate it as well as her genuine connections with
the police on the force. Yes, she has woo-woo, but it’s not sufficient to
replace police work, it enhances and adds to her abilities as a cop but doesn’t
change her from being a detective to being a magical deus ex. And yes, she
doesn’t exactly solve this present case through official channels, but she does
work within them and exhaust them first.
Other interesting elements include federal agents who
aren’t the evil clueless ones: not that I have any problem with police being
less than saints, especially ones who seem to work with vast power and little
accountability, – but I do appreciate a skilled detective working with the
forces of law rather than showing them up with their super special specialness
of extra special – especially since there is still that hope of legality and
respect for at least the appearance of procedure. It’s interesting for sheer
uniqueness if nothing else. It’s quite refreshing to see the federal woo-woo
department arrive and not say “aha, we shall now squabble like children over
the case!” but actually work together.
The world is excellent – it’s huge with many layers that
are referenced and touched on. There’s information elegantly woven into the
story so we actually get a really good idea of these different creatures and
realms and gods and how they fit in. All of this has enough detail to actually
give you more than just a name, but not so much as to actually derail the plot
with lots of irrelevant information.
The writing in general is massive fun and moves the story
along at a perfect rate. Everything isn’t lined up simplistically in a linear railroad,
but nor is the story clogged with side plots and distractions. We have
description without excess, scene setting without rambling, world building
without infodumping – a nice balance all round
Despite loving this book, there were things that still
paralleled tropes I do not like and/or find deeply problematic. But they often
have twists that make them different from usual.
Firstly, all Lupi are men. Whyyyy? I just don’t even come
close to understanding this. Why is it necessary to have an all male werewolf
society? It’s not the first time I’ve seen it and it probably won’t be the last
but it still bemuses me. What is this desperate urge to ensure female
werewolves are so few and far between?
Unlike other books with this trope, the pack doesn’t
exclude women. We have female doctors and family who join the pack, female
experts who are clearly considered competent and capable in their fields and
who are obviously precious and valued members of the clan. So I can’t say the
trope was even introduced to create the standard “one woman surrounded by men”
setting that werewolf novels so often seem to thrive on; because there are
women there. Is it an attempt to keep women out of combat roles? Keep them in a
support capacity and leave only Lily up front kicking arse? I suspect it may be
this because they also have a culture of never harming women and protecting and
sheltering women – don’t get me wrong, a werewolf culture of never harming women
is a blessed change from the repeated portrayals of angry alphas growing and
roaring at women for their terrible defiance – feels a lot like womenfolk being
put on a delicate pedestal of gentleness.
Then, of course, there’s always Lily’s grandmother who challenges the idea (and is awesome) extremely well.
Secondly, we have a Lily and Rule’s relationship having
that nasty woo-woo forced attraction in the middle of it. The goddess of the
werewolves creates “Chosen”, which is apparently the divine equivalent of
grabbing two people and smooshing them together while yelling “now kisssss!”
I don’t like it, I don’t like anything that contravenes
the consent of the couple and don’t find it slightly romantic. The Chosen
woo-woo forces them to stay extremely close to each other or they become dizzy
and fall over, it makes it near impossible to be near each other without
touching and ramps up an almost irresistible sexual attraction between them. In
fact, an actual irresistible attraction which Rule says, if unfulfilled, will
drive them both insane. On the plus side, while the Chosen status has all kinds
of religious significance to Rule and his pack, Lily is firmly on the side of
“no no, oh hell no!” and has a lot of excellent thinking and discussion about
choice. She openly refers to it as being forced and it does bother her, a lot.
She seeks to find limits to its influence, she makes it clear it doesn’t
dictate love, she even terms it as a “sexual geas”. She challenges it. But,
ultimately, she does accept it and their relationship is built on this
foundation.
There is also a lot of appropriation going on. While
there is a lot of complexity to how the Lupi in particular (and, in the
background, the supernatural in general) react to the modern world and even
their own concerns about being forced to assimilate with human society and
debating how much they want “civil rights” protections, these concerns are
generally presented as the opinions of the enemy – which is a rather simplistic
dismissal of what is often a very serious concern for marginalised groups. And
the comparison with marginalised groups is concern – there are direct parallels
drawn between prejudice against the Lupi and racial bigotry (even if many of
these are countered or ameliorated soon after they are made, they are still
very prevalent). We’ve
spoken before about the issues of appropriation marginalised histories like
this, especially drawing direct parallels when using a supernaturally
powerful, highly privileged and highly dangerous being as a stand in for actual
persecuted minorities. As an extra dislike, there are moments when Lily expects
persecuted minorities - like Black people – to be extra understanding of the “plight”
of Lupi which is all kinds of off.
There are a lot of POC in the book – including Lily Yu
herself. Lily manages to hit that balance between not being stereotyped (she
does know martial arts – but she’s also the female protagonist cop in an urban
fantasy story – most protagonists in these situations tend to) and not being
completely divorced from her culture. She’s also aware of how her race and
gender affect her in her job and comments on that. We have her grandmother as a
source of a lot of woo-woo, but we also have her mother who is certainly not
woo-woo orientated which is a nice contrast. Also, her grandmother is several
kinds of awesome. We have a large number of POC aside from Lily and her family,
most crowds or groups will contain POC, the police, the people she meets at
clubs, the people she works with, the lupi have a POC doctor – she’s Native
American and yes she is a shaman – but she’s also a doctor as well which is
emphasised as much, if not far more, than her woo-woo. There’s an effort to make
most of the groups we meet diverse and to have POC in a variety of different
roles (though with a somewhat exception of the Lupi themselves they being
described as generally pale – but that was only raised to reference Benedict
who definitely isn’t).
We have Lily who is, obviously, a capable woman and
several women around her – the doctor for the Lupi, her grandmother – who are
the same. I do want her to spend more time with other women though and,
perhaps, to have a female friend. There are good female characters around her
and she doesn’t have the contempt/hate for women we’ve seen elsewhere, but
other than her grandmother she doesn’t have a lot of women close to her either
– I’m hoping that will develop now we’re past the introduction book. Of course,
not all women are wonderful and good – far from it – but the different women,
even when not in major roles, help a long way to balance that. We also have a
very mature and deeper view of a woman in a semi-open relationship and a very
sympathetic and protective view of a prostitute (albeit one that cast her as a
victim automatically).
GBLT people we had 2, kind of. The first was an almost
un-named bit part in the beginning who existed to really affirm Rule’s
heterosexuality before we even met him. Second, one of the women Lliy
interviews says she’s bisexual but seems to do so primarily to try and unnerve
or make Lily uncomfortable. It’s a shame and doesn’t match the better
representation of other marginalised groups in the book.
So in all, did I like this book? Oh yes. Will I read the
next one? Certainly. Is it one of my favourites? It has the potential to be.
Edit: This is one of the few times when we find ourselves unable to agree on the Book of the Week. Renee found the book slow and clunky, with tropes she hates and it started by plunging her into the plot with no explanation leaving her struggling to find what is going on. She would rate this book:
Sparky thinks Renee is wrong like a wrong thing with extra wrongness. This is one of the few times when we find ourselves close to writing a review war because normally we agree within 0.5 fangs of each other.
