Katherine, raven shapeshifter and psychic, and her
grandmother are hunting a new enemy of the Damask circle: some unknown and
unseen force is kidnapping children. Their bodies turn up weeks after their
disappearance – but they’re not just dead, their very souls have been consumed
Obviously, this has to stop. And with Damask circle
resources stretched, any help they can get is very welcomed
Ethan is a police officer, his niece has been captured
and he’s definitely ready to step up and join the hunt. As a werewolf he has a
lot to offer – but he hates what he is and whatever fling he and Katherine has,
he is determined for it not to develop into more. Here’s there to save his
niece, not fall in love.
Interestingly, after I complained about the formulas
of the last book, this book rather subverts them. Oh, he is still the
physically superior, she is still the magical, less physical person (there are
limits after all), but she is the one who is informed. Katherine is the one who
understands about the supernatural and their nature and she is the one who both
guides Ethan into the world of the supernatural and works to get him to accept
his nature as a werewolf. She is the expert, she is the guide, she is the one
who knows what is going on and, with her powers, she is the one who is probably
the most dangerous of the two of them
Of course, in the past books those women were scared and
traumatised by their true nature, while Ethan is enraged and angsty so while we
break the pattern we still have the trope of the love of a good woman saving
the broody man-who-has-been-hurt-by-the-ladies before.
That hurt-by-the-ladies can sometimes manifest itself as
outright misogyny – one woman hurt him in the past so now all women cannot be
trusted. Women are evil and conniving, women get pregnant to entrap decent
menfolk with their wicked wicked wombs… I have no idea what Katherine sees in
him beyond the hawtness
He also has a moment of, to say the least, careless
language towards Katherine’s casual attitude to sex which comes across as
slut-shamy, but she is very good at calling that out.
Unfortunately, while Katherine is, possibly, the stronger
of the two she also needs rescuing at least twice and there is no real
equivalent going the other way. It’s like the book couldn’t just let her be the
stronger one, there had to be something to weaken her or put him in the role as
white knight.
So there are some nicely subverted tropes – or, at least,
patterns subverted – but some problems. The romance itself starts well in that
both Katherine and Ethan are happy to have a casual fling and Katherine is
certainly not a blushing virgin and has even had good sex before – all of which
are nearly unheard of in the genre. But we have the woo-woo raising its head,
with Ethan’s werewolf nature forcing him to have sex and creating a special
lusty sex aura that affects all women around him in a frankly consent breaking
and rape-esque manner. Ok, not with Katherine – she’s eager and willing, but
even then, the fact the werewolf aura induces almost irresistible lust in all
women around him means it’s virtually impossible for him to know whether any
woman he sleeps with during the full moon actually consents to sex.
Other elements of the romance are standard – super-duper
fast romance including the super-fast romance and lust. Seriously he’s talking
about her amazing sexy voice while they’re battling a vampire on first meeting.
There’s lots of “smelling desire” and sexy description in the most
inappropriate moments. I’m going to have to read these books in a padded room
for the times like these when I am sorely tempted to throw my tablet at a
wall).
There’s another pattern in these books I missed last time
that’s worth mentioning – an older, wiser woman to play mentor. But I really
like this, older women are not common in the genre, and these women don’t all
just stay at home and navel gaze, they’re quite willing to get in on the action
when necessary as well. It’s a nice subversion.
Inclusionwise… it’s not good. We have one POC – the villain
who is referred to as “oriental” and is, of course, stealing babies. Another
villain is ambiguously possibly bisexual – which the author refers to as “not
being choosey” and he is a sexual predator and a rapist. The problem is
exacerbated because this isn’t
the first time Kari Arthur has used possible-GBLTness as a short cut for
perversion/sex predation and outside of these awful portrayals I’ve found
no GBLT characters. Once is bad. Twice is extremely bad. Twice with no positive
counter-examples? That’s inexcusable.
The story itself is fairly standard and fairly background
the latter of which never feels right in these books. Here we have children who
have been kidnapped and are doomed to die a terrible terrible death – and far
too often Ethan and Katherien are distracted by each other’s issues or, far
more often, each other’s sexiness to an extent that it felt monumentally
self-absorbed while there were children under threat. The story wasn’t bad, but
it was a fairly standard hunt-the-leads, follow-the-clues with the odd stroke
of luck thrown in – it was meant to be a background to the romance and that’s
what it ended up being. That’s not always a bad thing – a love story isn’t
inherently a bad story (even with the tropes cluttering things up) but when the
characters seem to spend as much or more time considering each other’s hotness,
whether they’ll be together etc etc than they do about the small children who
are literally having their souls eaten… it’s hard not to question those
priorities.
In turn this means I just can’t engage with this
fascinating world the way I would like to – because it doesn’t really matter if
the characters were werewolves or shapeshifters or chasing demons or vampires
or monsters or just a mundane human kidnapper – because everything is pushed so
far back that the details become interchangeable.
We have some trope aversion in this book, which is nice
compared to past formulas and Katherine is a nice character. But there are
still some dogged tropes clinging on, some definite inclusion issues and a
story that is forced far too much into the background and comes across as
rather formulaic. It doesn’t make for an awful read or even a bad read – but it’s
not close to a compelling read either.
