BOOK REVIEW: The Bitter Seed of Magic by Suzanne McLeod

I am so tired of sexy vampires. Particularly ones whose entire personality can more or less be summed up as ‘mysterious’. If they are in a rather bland love triangle where the heroine is torn between the good guy and the sexy vampire bad boy, I begin to lose the will to live.

So it’s not good news that The Bitter Seed of Magic by Suzanne McLeod features such a vampire and such a triangle. I picked the book up looking for light entertainment, and it is in fact the third in the serious (I confess, I read books out of order, so sue me – that’s what happens when you’re taking your choice from what’s on the library shelves). But unfortunately, I didn’t find in particularly entertaining, and just now when my eye caught the quote on the cover calling it a “Fresh, unique and urban paranormal fantasy at its best [sic]” I nearly choked on my coffee. Although on second thoughts the lack of grammar and punctuation in that quote is probably something of a giveaway, either as to the quality of the recommending publication or the quality of the editing.

Which brings me to the editing of the book. I accept that writers have tics, in fact we all have writing tics (you may have noticed one of mine is overuse of the em-dash and brackets – probably punctuation overuse in general, actually.) McLeod suffers from the same problem with the em-dash, which I noticed but sympathised with. The one tic that did drive me absolutely bonkers when reading this book was the italics. To give you an idea, I opened it at page 5 and found no less than seven italicised words. One instance is, fair enough, a foreign phrase of two words. The rest? Thought, crack, human, looked and look. Apparently McLeod italicises anything that may have some magical significance, then italicises some more for emphasis. But this is the type of thing that a competent editor is supposed to fix, and I simply cannot understand why no-one addressed this. It made me consider putting the book down a few pages in, although I did eventually get used to it (sort of).

It’s a shame in some ways because sexy vampires and stereotypic character relatonships aside, there is some good world-building here. It’s fundamentally an urban fantasy with strong celtic elements, as well as a few vampires and witches for good measure. The main character, Genevieve, is likable enough, although she does seem to have a disturbing tendency to throw herself into bed with other members of aforesaid love triangle. It seems a little odd, possibly because the sexual tension between them also seems rather forced. I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that McLeod doesn’t provide reasons for Genevieve’s actions other than that the men are, of course, sexy (and supernatural). In fact, the lack of convincing backstory is another conspicuous hole in the plot.

Ah, the plot. Let me just say, I was pretty sure my brain was going to explode out my ears at some point, and not in a good way. I would bet you whatever you like that McLeod is one of those writers who makes things up as she goes along, because the way everyone turns out to be related to everyone else at the end seems implausible to say the least. It rather suggests that having dug herself into a rather deep and complicated hole some fancy footwork was required to get herself out again. And unfortunately, by that point I’d lost track of whom was related to whom and it didn’t all make that much sense anyway.

My verdict? It could have been better, but bad editing has ruined what was in any case a not-very-original book. One for the sexy-vamp-fans only.

 

AWW BOOK REVIEW: Sharp Shooter by Marianne Delacourt

 Cover lines which refer to bestsellers are a risky strategy, creating expectations which the novel itself may find hard to meet. Marianne Delacourt's Sharp Shooter raised my eyebrows with the cover line 'Introducing Tara Sharp, a new, kick -arse crime fighter for fans of JANET EVANOVICH.' (yes, capitals in the original). It's a bold move to refer to the woman who basically invented the kooky-crime-romance genre, although I presume the marketing department is to blame rather than the author. Unfortunately, while Sharp Shooter is a competent light-crime novel, it suffers in the comparison.

One area where Evanovich is particularly strong is keeping up the pace. In contrast, Delacourt introduces all her characters at a leisurely speed and with little urgency before the story actually begins. It’s not until page 39 and Chapter 7 when fledgling 'paralanguage agent' Sharp is hired by a dodgy lawyer with mafia connections that things start to get interesting. The first six chapters consist of background and introduction and if I hadn't been reading with a view to writing a review, I would have been tempted to put the book aside. In particular, I didn’t find Sharp engaging as a character in these early chapters. There was a great deal of what I thought was rather laboured slapstick (for example, I found the episode where she spills her drink on a potential client painfully unfunny.) Still, sense of humour is a personal thing and other readers may not have the same reaction.

Once the story gets going the book improves markedly and I liked the fact that it is set in Perth, obviously a city that Delacourt knows well. I think she also succeeded in maintaining a genuine Australian tone throughout, avoiding the risk of transplanting an essentially American story. The love interest is plausible and Tara Sharp also becomes more likable as the story progresses. Some of the more annoying minor characters fade out of view (the wise teacher speaking in broken english is one I particularly wanted to strangle).

One other aspect of the book that seemed rather underdone was the supernatural element. Sharp's ability to read auras is certainly an original plot device, but seems to me to be rather useless. As far as the story goes, an experienced reader of body language would end up with exactly the same information, and we hardly need descriptions of their auras to work out who are the bad guys. Instead, the aura reading becomes something of a sideshow, an alternative method of describing a character (eg. “Grassy green aura” instead of “tall with blue eyes”). It also makes the comparison with Janet Evanovich even more puzzling – while her new series does include a supernatural element, her hit Stephanie Plum series does not.  

Still, even taking the above into account, I did think it was competent and relatively entertaining, with a number of good points. It’s possible than fans of Janet Evanovich will like this book, if they are looking for something in a similar genre. I do think it could have done with some further thinking and editing, but then I’ve thought that about the last few Janet Evanovich books as well. I think it’s unfortunate that that cover line created such high expectations, because read on its own merits this is a competent and enjoyable Australian contribution to the light-crime-paranormal genre.