Enemy of Entropy
Review: The Watcher Series by Lilith Saintcrow
Mindhealer by Lilith Saintcrow
My review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m actually reviewing all five of the Watcher books. They’re quite short—novella length, really—and very much interrelated (especially the first four). I read all of them in about a day and a half, despite doing other things. I do advise taking them all in row, which is the equivalent of reading one “normal” novel.
Dark Watcher opens in Santiago City (aka Saint City), with a quartet of witches. Mindhealer is the only book that takes place outside of Santiago City, which seems to be the primary setting for all of Saintcrow’s novels (from what I’ve read in their descriptions).
Theodora, earth witch and healer, runs the Cauldron, an occult book and supply store. Mariamne Niege (water witch, prognosticator) and Elise Nicholson (fire witch) work for her in addition to being, respectively, a graduate student and a musician. Suzanne (air witch, I don’t believe we ever learn her last name) is Elise’s foster mother and their teacher, something of a high priestess to the little group.
The four women know that they’re psychic and that “magick” is real. They don’t know that they are “Lightbringers,” that there are groups and creatures in the world that hunt them, or that a group called Circle Lightfall trains and sends out “Watchers” to protect (and recruit) Lightbringers in order to counterbalance the darkness in the world.
Watchers are formerly wicked men with some psychic talents who have been given a chance to redeem themselves. They are bonded with a tanak, a dark symbiote that gives them supernatural speed, strength, healing power, and longevity. The tanak also makes it possible for them to sense darkness, but it causes the Watchers to experience pain whenever they’re around Lightbringers.
The catch is that for every Watcher, there is one Witch whose presence and touch will be intensely pleasurable instead of torturous. The hope of finding that one witch is what keeps each Watcher going, fighting and surviving horrific wounds for one chance at happiness.
The use of the tired soulmate meme (though that specific word is never used) is annoying, and it detracts from what is otherwise a fairly original concept. The fact that there are only male Watchers, though there are a few (mostly queer) male lightbringers, is a bigger disappointment. The reasoning given is that women do not have the viciousness to kill without hesitation. That’s simplistic, at best. Male lightbringers are also painted as weaker than females, and that, in combination with the pedestal upon which Watchers place Lightbringers, unbalances the novels.
Theodora is the main subject of the first book. Mariamne is the focus of Storm Watcher. Fire Watcher, of course, is primarily about Elise. We meet a new air witch, Anya Harris, in Cloud Watcher. And finally, Mindhealer is about Caro Robbins, whose brother plays a small part in Fire Watcher.
The books should certainly be classified as romances first, although they do have very strong paranormal themes. Every book follows the classic romance novel formula. The fact that I kept reading despite my dislike of romances is a testament to Saintcrow’s talent.
I suspect that the author either is pagan, or is very familiar with pagan practices. The rituals in each novel are nicely done, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear people using some of the invocations used in Circle.
I do have to propose the Watcher drinking game. Take a shot every time there’s any mention of treating a Watcher “dreadfully,” and every time a Watcher moans about how unworthy he is to be in the presence of a Lightbringer. You’ll be past noticing any formulae in no time!
Book Reviews: Magic Burns and No Rest for the Witches
I read two short books Wednesday and Thursday. The first, Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews, was great fun and very well written. It’s book two of her Kate Daniel series, and it certainly left me eager to read book three (which has just been turned in to the publisher, as I understand it).
I think I’m missing something, though. There are references to an ex-almost-boyfriend, Maximillian Crest, in Magic Burns. I just read Magic Bites at the end of March, and I don’t remember Crest at all. I don’t remember Kate having a love interest at all, in fact. Only a fool could miss the sexual tension between Kate and Curran, but that’s unresolved. I don’t remember any prior encounters with a teenaged urban shaman, either. So did I just miss some things, or are there stories set between the books that I don’t know about?
I do recommend these books to anyone who enjoys the urban fantasy genre. This one played around with Celtic mythology, which I also enjoy.
No Rest for the Witches contains four novellas. MaryJanice Davidson is the headliner, since she’s apparently the best-known of the four authors. I don’t remember how this book ended up in my hold queue at the library, but there it was with the others, so I checked it out.
Davidson’s contribution is “The Majicka,” which might or might not be set in the same world as her Betsy Taylor and Wyndham Werewolves stories (maybe even the mermaid series, although I haven’t read those so I can’t be sure). You really need a good reason to toss a fairy, a vampire, a werewolf, a woman enchanted into a vehicle by her archmage ex-SO, and a dryad into one novella. I didn’t really buy the explanation, honestly. I didn’t find the main character interesting or attractive, nor did I see any reason for the obligatory love interest to find her irresistible. But it’s a romance novella, and one of the absolute necessities seems to be people falling into love at first sight.
The setup of “Voodoo Moon” by Lori Handeland was a bit better, although that main character should turn in her FBI badge and forget having any career in law enforcement. The first guy she meets should have been wearing a red shirt, because it was way too obvious that he wouldn’t last long.
Cheyenne McCray’s “Breath of Magic” needs to be relabeled “erotica” instead of “paranormal romance.” Even if the hot guy does whisper sweet nothings to the main character, this novella is about the two people bumping fuzzies. There’s an intricate plot setup for absolutely no reason, as it certainly wasn’t necessary for them to get naked together, and there isn’t any resolution to any of the plot threads. The only way the sex scenes could have been more explicit would have involved wiring the two up to measuring devices, as inches and degrees are the only details not given. From the teaser of one of McCray’s books, it seems that the intricate plot is explored more thoroughly in at least one book. I got the feeling that the sex would be similar, as well.
“Any Witch Way She Can” by Christine Warren opens with much grousing by the main character about her spinsterhood. She then proceeds to try a love spell, but does a lot of ingredient substitution and doesn’t follow the instructions properly. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work as expected. Unfortunately, she doesn’t experience any dreadful consequences as a result of toying with things she doesn’t understand, either. And of course she, like the characters in two of the other novellas, will end up in bed with a guy she meets right after meeting him.
I need to go through my hold queues at both libraries to be sure there aren’t any more romances hiding there, because I obviously have a very bad attitude about them. I know that there’s a formula, and it seems that all of these novellas do follow it. But I don’t like formulaic fiction, and I don’t know that it could be written well enough to really please me.
On to Blindfold Game by Dana Stabenow. That should provide a nice change of pace.
Review: Bump in the Night by J.D. Robb, et al.
This paranormal romance anthology contains four novellas. I’d never heard of three of the authors, but I haven’t really looked to see what else they’ve written, either.1 They may be well-known to romance fans. I fell into reading J.D. Robb’s books because of the science fiction/mystery angle, and didn’t initially know that J.D. Robb is a pseudonym for well-known romance author Nora Roberts.2 Her romances may be great, but I’m not interested in them. I’m actually getting pretty damned tired of the paranormal romance thing, but since anybody who writes them seems to be able to get a book contract, I doubt they’ll stop flooding the market any time soon. I try to stick to the ones that have more plot than romance, but sometimes it’s hard to tell where a book will fall. Laurell Hamilton, for instance, began writing really good dark fantasy books that got a little sexy, and now she’s writing romance novels that happen to have vampires and werecritters in them.3
It’s often said that we read fiction to get more of something that’s missing in our lives. I’m gifted with a partner who is one of the most romantic, loving people in this world, and, to be blunt, we have a great, um, private life, which may explain why I don’t find romances or erotica much of a draw. I don’t have many mysteries or much out-and-out adventure in my life (thankfully!), so I enjoy reading about them in fictional characters’ lives — especially if they take place in settings completely unlike my own world.
Anyway, on to the review.
The book opens with “Haunted in Death” by J.D. Robb, which her readers will immediately recognize as an Eve Dallas story4 Robb/Roberts is a pro, and the story is a decent read. But! Is it just me, or are the Eve-Roarke fights and reconciliations getting more and more boring? They’re always about the same thing!
“Poppy’s Coin” by Mary Blayney was my favorite of this anthology. Yes, it was obvious from the couple’s first encounter how the relationship would go, but that’s the way it is with the entire romance genre, isn’t it? I might actually look for more of Blayney’s work at some point. After looking at her web site, I don’t think I’ll be reading any of her novels. I learned that there’s another anthology featuring these same four authors, Dead of Night, and that the publisher has contracted them for a third volume, as yet unnamed. Blayney’s piece in the second collection seems to be connected with “Poppy’s Coin,” so I’ll probably take a look at it. Unfortunately, having read this one story and the descriptions of her novels, it seems that she’s stuck in something of a rut. I can’t say more without giving spoilers for this story, so I’ll leave it to you to visit her site if you want to know more.
Ruth Ryan Langan’s “The Passenger” was okay, I guess. Maybe. Something about the male protagonist set my teeth on edge right away, and I would have kicked his oh-so-self-assured butt out of my abode as soon as he referred to himself by his famous moniker. Then again, I’d also tell the female lead to put on her big girl panties and get on her with life, as she comes across as way too emo for my tastes. Langan needs to remember to “show, not tell.” I might have given her a bit of a pass in a short story, but this is a novella. She had plenty of word-count in which to show us something positive about her characters, instead of labeling them.
I nearly stopped reading the book when I got to “Mellow Lemon Yellow” by Mary Kay McComas. I was totally disinterested in reading about another whiny chick, right after Langan’s story. I didn’t feel any connection at all. I finished out of sheer doggedness, and will probably forget the story and the author very quickly. I can hope, anyway.
If you’re a completist, as I am, and you read the In Death books, you’ll want to read this volume. If I collected the novels5, I’d buy this one used if at all possible. As it is, I’m glad I checked it out of the library instead of investing any money in it.
1 Well, I hadn’t done so before I began writing this review. I looked up their web sites to link to them, obviously.
2 Well-known to romance fans, anyway. I hadn’t heard of her before reading the Robb books. Come to think of it, the first thing I read by Robb was another anthology, Out of This World, which I picked up because of the Anita Blake novella in it. That was before I realized that all such novellas are really the first chunk of Hamilton’s next novel, and if I read them it spoils some of the pleasure I’d otherwise find in that novel.
3 I consider the Anita Blake books to be her first novels. That horrid Nightseer thing is just a bad transcription of somebody’s roleplaying campaign. If I were Hamilton, I would have acquired and destroyed every copy in existence, then prayed that the world would forget about it.
4 They’re all entitled “(something) in Death.”
5 I don’t, as I don’t anticipate ever wanting to re-read them.
