Rating: 3 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
“I’m a non-magical human!” Stace shouts.
Father Way shakes his head. “No, you’re too cool.”
This second book in the Gamin Immortals series introduces us to a new character in Stace. Ostensibly, this is a story continuing Lili’s journey of growth from monstrous demon to … good demon with a soul, but the book spends a great deal of time going on and on rhapsodizing about Stace, the human. The fae think Stace might be a fairy of some sort, because they wear colored contacts and have had cosmetic surgery done to give their ears points. Lili notes, again and again, how muscular Stace’s arms are and how strong they are. Why, Stace even has a pink travel trunk so strong that only Stace can lift it! Stace talks back to loas, who are so taken with Stace’s coolness that they give in. Baron Samedi also thinks they are pretty darn cool. Through all the scenes in this book, everyone is in awe about Stace.
And this is a problem for the story. The plot is fairly straightforward. Someone has been dosing people with a magical new drug to make them show their monstrous side and then either die or kill someone — or something — else. But then there’s another plot about Jo, Lili’s love currently resting in a coma, and a side plot of the fae being so frightening that even Lili doesn’t want to fuck with them. However, each plot ends in a way that felt (for the fae) rushed or nonsensical. The big reveal makes no sense, feeling very much like a deus ex machina, but for all that, there are elements that are interesting. But in between all of this, again and again, for some reason is Stace.
If that’s the story the author wanted to write, Stace, a normal human appearing in this chaotic world of immortals, demons, and magic, that could have been interesting. Instead, the character feels shoehorned into a story where they don’t belong. Stace takes focus away from Lili, the infamous Lilith, mother of demons, the immortal being created at the same time as Adam, and the murder mystery she is trying to solve. Instead, Lili and Patty, a powerful necromancer and Lili’s best friend, seem so taken with Stace’s coolness that they take Stace — the normal human — along with them while they investigate a murder, look for a missing witness, and even into hell itself. It just made this book more than a bit of a chore to read.
That, and the fact that every character felt like they talked the same, thought the same, and acted the same, and no character seems to have any reaction to the events taking place. All of the many (many) witty asides and fourth wall commentary as Lili goes on about how dangerous she is, how stupid she is, how clueless she is grow tiresome because she’s only singing the one note over and over. The author’s humor, their snark and banter, fell flat to me in large part because everyone feels the same, but also because no one seems to care. Lili can say either the stupidest, cruelest, most asinine thing or else something halfway clever and gets the some non-reaction in either case. No one seems to have any thoughts or feelings of their own, they just feel like actors on a stage waiting their turn to speak their lines and it made for some very boring reading.
This is not a badly written story, but unfortunately there’s just so much here I didn’t enjoy.
