Six months ago, Abby Sinclair was struggling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Now, she has an enchanted iPod, a miniature unicorn living in her underwear drawer, and a magical marketplace to manage. But despite her growing knowledge of the OtherWorld, Abby isn’t at all prepared for Brystion, the dark, mysterious, and sexy-as- sin incubus searching for his sister, convinced Abby has the key to the succubus’s whereabouts. Abby has enough problems without having this seductive shape-shifter literally invade her dreams to get information. But when her Faery boss and some of her friends vanish, as well, Abby and Brystion must form an uneasy alliance. As she is sucked deeper and deeper into this perilous world of faeries, angels, and daemons, Abby realizes her life is in as much danger as her heart—and there’s no one she can trust to save her.
Comment: Yet another book from my PNR obsession years...
In this story we meet Abby Sinclair, a young woman who has recently become the touchstone for Moira, an important elf in the paranormal community. This means she can manage the marketplace where many types of beings show up, but in the last weeks things have been rather strained for Abby because Moira hasn't been around and it's starting to be noticeable. To make things worse, Brystion, an incubus, shows up to ask Moira something, related to his missing sister. He and Abby butt heads but she isn't completely indifferent to them, as as they spend time discussing Moira's whereabouts, they discover another female has disappeared. When clues hint at a possible scenario, it seems too unlikely, but is it really? Suddenly several people are looking for the missing females, but what can they all have in common and where are they?
From the first page, is a full dive in to this world of magic and special beings and I will say it took me a bit to understand what was going on. I suppose starting right off with a lot of action, as if one has always been in the middle of things, might help but it can also be confusing and now I've finished, I still can't quite grasp why Abby was able to know about this magical community, for I sense humans aren't aware of their existence. There isn't a lot of attention given to humans in general, and I can imagine perhaps that is an element that doesn't matter.
The story is quite interesting on its own, at the base of it there's the amateur investigation of what happened to the missing females, being a common element that they were painted for a themed project and the paintings are in an exhibit. In fact, Abby was painted too, and now she wonders if someone is kidnapping them and if so, why and for what purpose. The investigation was simple, and the explanation a little predictable, but I must say the magical aspects related to how the females disappeared were intriguing and novel enough for me to want to know more about the whole thing.
For me, the issue was in the set up. The story starts without much to it, which isn't usual in first books. Done well, this can be good and help the reader feel part of it as one slowly learns more, but sometimes I felt there were too many things going on and not enough order to them. I felt lost here and there and when the author would add some supposed humor or sarcasm in how the characters were interacting, I did loose interest, I admit. There were some scenes that felt too distracting and a little unnecessary? I know this is a personal preference and perhaps not as much the author's fault.
That said, the progression of the story was interesting enough once everyone realized the connection between the missing females. While this was happening we also got to have scenes and characters who somehow made a few elements of the world make sense and I started to be more interested. Then, others secondary issues would be mentioned, and characters would go on to discuss those things I didn't understand and I'd go back to feel frustrated. Perhaps this is one of those cases where a brief explanation of the world's "rules" before the first chapter might help. Yes, yes, some authors don't need it, but here I kept thinking it might have helped me.
Abby as main character is intriguing because she is both fierce in helping others but vulnerable for her past (she lost her mother and is still mourning) and because Moira didn't explain what being a Touchstone meant. This could have been better developed by the author, even knowing other books might come after, because it made some details feel as if they were not planned properly and a few sequence of events didn't make much sense either.
No comments:
Post a Comment