Zoe Faust, alchemist, herbalist and semi-immortal, has
stopped her long years of wandering across America to finally settle in her new
home in Portland. She’s finally ready to set down some roots and let go of the
pain of the past.
But her fresh start wasn’t intended to include a stow-away gargoyle in her storage crates. Dorian needs an alchemist, desperately, as his body is turning back to stone and only a studious alchemist can reverse that if they can interpret the book he has…
…which is then stolen at the same time as a murder victim
is dumped on her porch. Not exactly the most welcoming of homewarmings.
We have a lot of original elements to this book which
first drew me to it. The whole use of Alchemy, a form of magic that has very
little in the way of flashy moves or deus-ex story fixing definitely intrigues
me. It has a presentation of longevity that manages to be angsty but in a more
reasonable fashion than the over the top dramatic moping I’ve come to know and
loathe. A gargoyle is definitely a nice touch and it all comes together very
well. Even the way Zoe is inserted into the mystery generally works well – it
gives her a motive and a need to be involved without any sense of the
protagonist randomly inserting themselves where they don’t belong.
There’s also a lot of research in this book that really shows in the writing – the history that has been delved to has informed the characters and added some nice substance to the overall book
This is all very promising but the plot falls down in one
main way – the pacing. The pacing of this book is really slow, there’s a lot of
time spent describing situations and experiences and Zoe’s past. There’s also a
lot of time spent with Zoe being involved in Brixton’s life and his drama and
even more time spent cooking and describing that cooking in detailed terms. On
top of this we have her moving into the new rickety house and the problems
inherent with that and her general getting by in her new neighbourhood. It’s
frustrating because we’re hammered home by Dorian how very very urgent and
essential it is that a solution to his petrification be found but there’s
absolutely no urgency from the characters themselves, the narrative or any
interaction.
In some ways, though, this slowness adds to the theme of
Zoe not really knowing what to do and having all this urgency she has few tools
to deal with. Ultimately, Zoe is severely out of her depth. She isn’t an
investigator and she doesn’t want to be one, she has spent much of the last few
decades keeping to herself and keeping her secrets – these are things she wants
to go on doing. Still, even with that thematic note, the story needed advancing
and there just needed to be more urgency injected into the characters – Zoe taking
regular leisurely walks or stopping for tea destroy any sense of her being
hurried or being even slightly aware of the time constraints she’s under. I’m not
saying they’re poorly done – she managed to make the food sound pretty
appetising, for example – but they were out of place and often severely in the
way. This isn’t a recipe book and in storyline with such urgency, I shouldn’t
feel like I’ve been dropped into one
She’s also very unwilling to do all the things that are
so standard in the genre- breaking and entering, interfering with evidence,
etc. Zoe doesn’t view these things as acceptable or something she is capable of
achieving or something she should be doing which I do like. I actually really
like how so many of the common “investigative” tropes are skewered – Zoe protesting
about evidence, the grand detective gathering etc – I do appreciate a good sporking.
Characterisation is generally very good in terms of the
details and development of the characters. I know a lot about Zoe and Dorian
and Brixton and even side characters like Blue. What I also appreciate is that
even minor characters like Brixton’s mother and the grumpy gossip Olivia are
presented in a well rounded light even though their negative traits are most
prominent – they’re more than just caricatures of unpleasantness. Even the most
minor of characters (almost) have sufficient information about them to make
them feel real and full persons. It creates a really strong foundation for this
world and book setting because there is such a real effort to make everything
so real
The problem is that there’s a whole lot of tell rather
than show in this characterisation and I’m not sure how relevant or even
realistic it is. I’m not sure why Blue shared her life story in as much detail
as she did. I think Olivia volunteered a lot of personal information very
early. UI love that they’re characterised – but we don’t see well rounded characters,
the characters introduce us to their well-roundedness. I also find Zoe and
Dorian really hammer home their sad pasts at often entirely irrelevant times
(exploring tunnels in the dark together looking for lost children? Now is
clearly the time to talk about our mutual sad pasts!) and I’m not entirely sure how much having
these sad pasts (especially Zoe’s two-fold sad past) really adds to either
character or couldn’t have just been inferred. In some ways I think I may be
suffering from genre overload – because the tragic backstory is nearly
compulsory in this genre so it has lost all meaning for me. It’s reached a
point where it feels like Zoe has to have a sad past because an Urban Fantasy
protagonist simply has to at this point.
Which also brings me to that “almost all characters” thing up there – because we have Max Liu who is pretty glaring in his lack of development. Cynically, I almost feel like the whole book was written and an editor or publisher suddenly gasped “but where is her love interest! SHE MUST HAVE ONE!” and Max was crowbarred into a narrative that didn’t really have a place for him.
Diversity wise, Max Liu is Asian but, as I said, his role
in the book is odd. He’s in a few scenes but not really involved in them. I don’t
remember any other POC and there are no LGBT or disabled people.
A last little complaint – I don’t know if it’s an editing
issue or if maybe the author speaks French but doesn’t always write it – but there’s
a lot of French in this book and some of it is wrong – phonetically it works,
but that’s not how the words are spelled.
In the end I find myself almost searching for more
positive things to say about this book because there’s a lot about it I liked
and enjoyed – but there are also a lot of problems and, in all honestly, I can’t
say they’re insignificant or ignorable. I managed to enjoy the book despite the
issues with pacing and excess tangents but if someone turned round to me and
said “I just couldn’t get through it” I would understand why.
