Proceeding in order from weakest to best … THE MARVELOUS HAIRY GIRLS: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds by Merry Weisner-Hanks is nominally the story of the Gonzales family, Canary Islanders suffering from a genetic quirk that grew hair all over their bodies. In the late 1500s this led to Pedro Gonzales and later his kids getting swapped around the courts of Europe like baseball cards, passed from the court of one monarch to the next.
That would have made an interesting book but Weisner-Hanks is more interested in the cultural backdrop that would have shaped how monarchs and courtiers responded to them. Beliefs about hairy savages of the New World. The eternal enthusiasm for stories of fantastic monsters and unbelievable wonders. The complicated rules of court life. The uncertainty whether someone like them should be seen as intelligent beasts or human freaks. It’s interesting but the family’s life story fades away in the middle of it all, and ultimately that hurts the book.
THE LIES THAT SUMMON THE NIGHT: A Songs for the Sinless Novel by Tessonja Odette is a romantasy set in a world where artists are criminals, as making or performing art draws Dark Powers to feed on it. The protagonist is a performer forced into service to a demon-hunter whom she finds the Most Obnoxious, Most Irritating Man She’s Ever Met (we know where that’s going) — which unfortunately comes too close to the romantic set-up of Arcana Academy. That doesn’t make Odette’s novel bad, it’s simply that I don’t need two series with that trope (which people more versed in romantasy says is common). I was more frustrated that it’s obvious from the get-go that everything the protagonist believes will turn out to be a lie. I was also bugged (I realized this is an odd complaint) by how contemporary the cussing felt, with everyone dropping the f-bomb as if they lived in the 21st century. In any case, I gave up after 100 pages.
THE NIGHT RAVEN: Crow Investigations Book One by Sarah Painter (cover by Stuart Bache) is an urban fantasy variation on the old crime-drama plot where the hero wants to quit but They Keep Pulling Her Back In.
The hero in this case is Lydia Crow of the Crows, one of the four crime families who run the London underworld. The Pearls can sell anything to anyone, the Silvers are hypnotically persuasive and the Fox family are super-seductive (at least I think that’s it). Curiously the Crows have much stronger powers — or used to, as the magic of all four has dwindled over time. Lydia’s only ability is a spider-sense like flair for detecting magic.
Lydia’s career as a PI in Scotland has flatlined so she’s back in London briefly. But wouldn’t you know, her conniving Uncle Charlie has a little, completely harmless job for her, finding a missing college-student cousin. Sure, why not? Spoiler: there’s more going on than it seems, but you probably knew that.
I enjoyed that this is a relatively low-level magical world, compared to all the series that try to stand out by going over the top. The downside is that outside of Lydia’s ghostly roommate this would work just as well if it were a straight mystery story with no magic. It’s also anticlimactic in the ending reveals and resolution — seeding for future books I guess — and the detective on the case jumps into the sack with Lydia way too quickly. Enjoyable overall, but I don’t know if I’ll pick up Book Two.
THE GIRL WITH A THOUSAND FACES by Sunyi Dean was really good. It starts off like a standard urban fantasy as Merry, an amnesiac ghostbuster in 1975 Hong Kong, discovers the corrupt secret behind a recent boom in hauntings. All is not as it seems and midway through we go into a flashback, something which often ruins fantasies for me. Not this time. The twists are clever, the characters are good and the sense of Hong Kong is much more vivid than Highfire Crown‘s sense of Johannesburg.
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