An-An lives a rather casual life, happily doing her
thing, involved in the LGBTQ community and working casually – when one of those
casual jobs has her working for MC Anderson. MC is driven, determined talented
and making a name for herself in the magical community. She’s an exorcist and
an extremely good one
And she’ll need to be, because the demon she’s been
called in to evict is not responding how anyone expected; though for all the
curiosity, An-An is far more interested in her boss than any demonic activity
This book did a pretty awesome job of covering a lot within
the format of a short story – cramming a lot in a short space without it
feeling rushed or forced or out of place.
The world is painted pretty richly with just a few of
these indications – the idea of magical universities, different branches of
magic, the official qualifications and professional reputations of the magic
users – the rather delightfully dusty, established-lawyer sense to the magical
firm all excellently portrayed with just a few references. You don’t need pages
and pages to describe magic as a legal profession – just these little hints
really establish that aspect of the world
Similarly, the description of the several kinds of
exorcism and the research into different kind of demons help reveal the full range
of magic and creatures that our out there – by using a lens on a small section
while implying that there’s so much more there the world is revealed without
lots of minutiae that just aren’t necessary for the story and would bog it
down. It’s a nicely restrained way to world build that works really well in the
short story format where you have so little room to world build without bogging
down your main characters.
The story itself was also well balanced – interesting enough
to keep things moving and intriguing with just enough elements of danger and
tragedy to pull things along and add some stakes to the plot. But, ultimately,
neither complex enough nor involving people are who presented enough to create
any real dominance. This is a character driven story, the story is there as a
background to show An-An and MC get to know each other, it’s not there to be
the main plot. In some ways that disappointments me – because the world setting
and plot line deserves some development and could have been an excellent book
in their own right. It’s well done to
put the focus on the romance but, personally, I’d rather have had a longer
book, more use of this excellent world than a romance story which was good, but
entirely predictable.
The main focus is on An-An and MC and painting these
excellent characters. MC’s professionalism, her abrasiveness (which I found
slightly irritating to begin with as it had elements of “I’m so awesome I can
treat people like shit” to it) which melted and deepened as we learned more
about this career driven character (and the trade offs she’s made to get where
she is) as well as the difficulties and discrimination she has faced and
overcome as a trans person (she describes herself as a “masculine person” but
uses female pronouns and expressly states that she’s not cis). She’s a nice
combination of challenging gender norms, in some ways confirming stereotype but
at the same time making it more about presentation than stereotype – and challenging
and outright averting stereotype in others
Again with An-An – we have a lot of her history laid out
through snatches, the fact she’s Asian, the importance of family to her, hints
of her past struggles and disappointments of being magically interested and
trained but not magically gifted, her involvement with the greater LGBT
community. We have continued exploration of gender presentation, both working
with and definitely averting stereotyping and complexities such as having to
adjust the way she dresses depending on the situation – not just for
professionalism but to tone down her gender presentation for fear of how it
will be perceived. Even little things like her family buying her clothes which
are clearly not to her taste as subtle signs of cis and heternormativity
affecting her.
It’s a nice story and touches on a lot of complexities
with a subtle and careful hand, bringing out a lot of these characters lives, struggles
and issues without dwelling on them, monologuing on them or being overwhelmed
by them. It’s more subtle and more careful than that. I do think there was
fodder there for a much longer and more involved story, I do think that An-An
and MC deserve to have more of their story told than them meeting, having one
event, and eventually working their way to bed (especially since that was
somewhat predictable from the start). There’s a lot that could be done with
these characters, world and setting – what was done was elegant, neat and fun
but if it weren’t for the gender presentation of the characters, it would also
be an elegant, neat and fun rendition of a basic plot I’ve seen a lot.
