Tag: Urban Fantasy

Just when I thought Kate Daniels was through and I was reduced to catching glimpses or mentions of her through Andrews’ other same-universe series, out comes this little novella, re-whetting my appetite for Kate and Curran adventures.

It was almost perfect.  I understand moving Kate and Curran to another city allows for a fresh set of adventures with new fiends to fight and friends/alliances to make, but I still knocked .5 a star off because I miss the old friends, dammit!  Not all of them, but I’d have really liked Barabas and Christopher to stick around.

Even without them, the story was excellent.  Very tightly written (and well edited!) with a plot that’s constantly moving forward, a lot of action, and a fair number of bad guys dying, with the humorous dialog that always make these books fun to read, even when the content gets a bit dark.

In my last review of an Andrews’ work, I bemoaned their decision to break completely from traditional publishing and stated a number of reasons why I thought it was less than ideal; I’ll add another (purely selfish) reason: with no traditional publishing contract, it’s anyone’s guess as to when – or even if – they’ll get around to writing another Wilmington Years story.  It’s hard enough to wait for a favourite series when you know it’s scheduled; it’s excruciating when you’re left at the whim of the author.  Still, fingers crossed, because it’s obvious Kate and Curran aren’t ready to be retired just yet.

What a weird blend of Eurovision, The Bachelor and Catherynne Valente’s Space Opera.  Andrews sucked me in to the Innkeeper series by making the first one a gateway drug to what is ultimately a science fiction series – something that is definitely not my jam.  But I thoroughly enjoy the recurring characters so I keep with the series.

This was, for an Andrews book, a door stopper at 440 pages and the plot is a story within a story.  As it started as a serial, the complicatedness and length made sense and overall, it ready fast.

My biggest beef with the book and the reason for my rating is that, as a self-published book usually is, it’s terribly edited.  In addition to the myriad missing words (usually of the article and conjunction variety), Gaston becomes Tony from one sentence to the next in a scene that has already put Tony off-planet, and the final climatic scene of the Bachelor-like competition is so convoluted that I had to read it three times before it made any sense to me at all.  (The authors’ start with a countdown from 6th place, but then after 6th and 5th are announced, suddenly switch to counting up from 2nd.)  Frankly, this just pissed me off and really took a chunk of my enjoyment away from the story as a whole.

I understand the reasons for established authors to self publish on occasion but I think the Andrews are making a mistake to switch wholly to self publishing.  Their creativity might flourish, but their reputation, in the long run, won’t.  Self publishing suffers from the lack of editorial resources, and most of all, the lack of big publishing’s marketing resources.  While I’m a huge fan of just about everything this writing team puts out in terms of stories, I’m not about to haunt their website just to have some idea of if or when a new book comes out – and the odds of their attracting new readers to their body of work diminishes.  I just really wish they’d find a balance between self and traditional marketing.

Digression aside, this was definitely my least favourite InnKeeper book so far, although I love how the end circles back to what will hopefully be a follow up to Maude’s book and its cliffhanger ending.