Witchling, Yasmine Galenorn

While the little guy was napping, I took a bath and finally finished Witchling. Overall, I’m impressed. Once the action started, it kept me flipping through pages when I should have been working or writing.

The concept of the novel intrigued me: three half-fae sisters have to stop The Big Bad from taking over earth and Otherworld, the home of Fairy. With the help of a handful of memorable side characters, they are able to hold him off…for now.

Though I will end up buying at least the next book in the series, there were a few things about the book that really hindered my reading. As it is the first book in the series, though not the first written by the author, I understand that it can be difficult to get into the heads of the characters so early on. That said, Camille, the narrator, was one of my problems. I could not connect with her to save my life: she held no depth and was horribly cliched at times. Her description of an orgasm as la petite mort about made me throw the book down and relegate it to the garage sale box. The sex scene was ruined from that point on. Her use of acronyms (as I mentioned in a previous post) was also bothersome, but every writer has their style, and I can look past it as long as the plot is moving.

My favorite part of the book was the assortment of auxiliary characters. Menolly, the sister-turned-vampire, is my favorite of the sisters. You can see the layers beneath her character already, making me want to skip Changling and jump right into Darkling. As for Camille’s actual/would-be lovers:

• Smoky the sexy dragon leaves me curious as to how a dragon would fit in to the sisters’ lives.
• Morio the fox demon seems to have a few tricks up his sleeve, but the use of Japanese words to describe his actions, without explaining what those actions are, is confusing.
• Trillian the Svartan seems to be like every Alpha male in the genre at the moment. Perhaps his character will surprise me, but right now I hope he doesn’t recuperate after being poisoned by the skinwalker.

If the characterization of the sisters improves, I can see myself becoming a fan of the Sisters of the Moon. If not…well, I have a box of garage sales books that have been getting lonely.