Eric’s life was pretty simple – he had his job as a bar
tender and his books.
Until a vampire attacks him and an ex girlfriend of his
goes missing and he meets Amy who introduces herself as his Guardian because of
a pact with his family. Now he’s up to his eyeballs in vampire politics,
werewolf gangs and so much more than he ever dreamed of
Above all the fact that he has magic – he’s a witch, one
of the few left in the world, and a challenge, asset and threat to the other
Arcane of San Francisco.
This is the first novel of a new series – which means as
much as it is about telling a story it’s also about introducing a world and
cast to convince us that we want to play in it – and I think this book has done
a pretty decent job all round, albeit perhaps not a stellar job
The world is a good one – but not an especially original
one. We have vampires in all their ancientness and werewolves in all their
furriness with assorted shapeshifters around the periphery for funness. The
characters themselves are interesting (the werewolf mob boss, the vampire club
owner) and it’s all presented well with bonus extras that we don’t see a lot
elsewhere – the undefined Guardians and the hinted at Red Angels with extra
mystery brought by the fae
I think when these are developed – along with the whole
near-extinction of the witches and their nature – have potential to throw in
lots of new angles. I also think it’s probably a good idea not to overdevelop
them at this stage so the book can spend more time focusing on introducing
Eric, the protagonist. This means the world is decent, fun, interesting and
also very very very very similar to a lot of worlds out there. That’s not
inherently a bad thing – I liked those books, I like big worlds full of the
supernatural, but until these extra elements are developed there’s little in
the world to make it stand out in the genre.
The primary role of this book is to set up Eric, the
protagonist – and I have mixed feelings about him
Eric has lived nearly his entire life without any real
familiarity of the supernatural. Sure he’s aware that vampires and werewolves
exist along with the rest of the population since they’ve recently had a
Masquerade breaking a few years ago, but otherwise he’s quite clueless. Yet he
doesn’t let that stop him leaping into the supernatural world head first
without much in the way of hesitation. He often steps in things completely
against the advice of his friend/mentor/guardian/totally-not-an-angel. He’s
reckless, he’s foolish and if he weren’t the protagonist with a truly epic
level of plot armour, he would be dead several times over.
I don’t know what frustrates me more, the lack of good
decision making or the fact that his decisions nearly always work without any
real consequences
Eric also trusts extremely easily – like Amy. Sure she
saved his life but she won’t even tell him her last name, what exactly she is,
what her relationship with his mother or his family is but has already declared
herself to be his guardian and follows him around. And if he does trust her so
much could he at least trust her enough to listen to her advice?! Like she
tells him it’s very important he not let the world know he’s a witch and I don’t
think the echoes of her warning have died before he’s told half of San
Francisco.
He’s so blasé and careless – he falls in with the
vampires (after going to see them. Alone. Against all advice. And still not
getting eaten) and even starts dating Teresa - again against advice and just a
few short days after being attacked by a vampire and describing the whole
experience as traumatic and violating. In fact, Eric’s life changes a lot very
quickly and becomes a lot more violent and messy but he rolls with it
incredibly easily. Now, I’m no fan of drawn out angst, reading my past reviews
will make that clear – but some reflection or pause would have helped a lot
here.
What I really did like is how Eric addressed problems. He
doesn’t seek out fights and he doesn’t try to win them by combat prowess – in fact
he is basically surrounded by people who are a lot more dangerous in a fight
than he is – especially Amy and Teresa. He tries to be the voice of reason and
understanding, he criticises people for not being and he tries to bring
opposing sides together to talk. He’s not a gun’s blazing action protagonist
and does try reason, diplomacy and understanding to try and resolve things
along with a nice, hefty dollop of empathy that really works. Despite his often
working with the vampires he does his best not to pick a side and generally
tries to be a decent (if not always sensible) person.
I don’t think I can really underscore this element of
Eric’s character – he’s a nice guy (and note the lack of inverted commas there,
he’s a genuinely decent bloke) doing his best. He’s not always sensible and he
utterly fails at being devious or underhanded and all that combines to mean I
generally like him even while having strong reservations about his decision
making and response to emotional trauma/shock.
On women we have a bit of a victimisation and rescue meme
going on. While Teresa and Amy are certainly more dangerous than Eric at this
point, the whole motivation of this story is Eric deciding to involve himself
in rescuing Sam, a woman he knew years ago at university (and there’s little reason
why he wouldn’t trust the authorities to do it). Along the way he rescues
Rebecca, another shapeshifter and Amy is also captured and in need of rescue.
That’s a lot of rescuing of women to happen in one book by someone who hasn’t
come close to gaining his power or a role that would put him in the position of
professional rescuer.
I also feel that Amy didn’t get a lot of credit for what she did. Her whole persona was one of mystery along with Nick, the other Guardian. She is sworn to protect Eric for reasons unknown and ends up being dragged along with him to various risky conditions (against her advice) and often doing as much – or more – than Eric in those situations but Eric is generally considered the hero/primary actor/etc in those situations. There were times when I wanted her to turn round and smack him for volunteering them for things when she would likely be doing at least half of the legwork. There are some excellent moments when Eric challenges misogyny and some moments that edge towards paternalistic chivalry.
There are several POC in this book, with Teresa, a
Brazillian woman and vampire (second in command of the vampires), being the
most prominent. Other than her, though, we are looking at a lot of background
police detectives (latino), his boss at the bar where he works (a Black man)
and not much in the way of major characters that I remember. This book has no
LGBT people at all – but draws on LGBT analogies for the supernatural
(closeting language for example).
I’m intrigued, I’m interested and looking forward to the
next book. It was generally well written with a protagonist who, despite some
bad habits, was different enough and sympathetic enough to stand out to me as
someone whose story I wanted to follow. The world is interesting, the writing
good – all in all it’s a good book and a series I’m happy to add to my to read
list, albeit not one that quite stands out in the crowd.
