Book Review - Alexis Hall's Shadows and Dreams
Published by: Riptide Publishing
Publication Date: June 14th, 2014
Format: Kindle, 312 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
A damsel in distress walks into the office and Kate Kane sets to make it right. That's what being a P.I. is all about, racking up the exes and femme fatales, which aren't mutually exclusive. This ex was more an almost hookup in the doorway of a Pizza Express, but beggars can't be choosers and it's been a dull few months since Kate sent that sewer faery packing. And yes, he had some fancy ass title he went by, but let's face it, he was a faery living in a sewer hence sewer faery. What's more Kate's girlfriend is a centuries old vampire Prince who is too busy selecting a new Prince of Swords after the last Prince of Swords got skewered along with the sewer faery to spend any time with her. Therefore Kate is glad to help Tash find her missing brother Hugh. He was admitted to hospital with a broken leg and then just disappeared. Kate dutifully heads off to the hospital to find that he mysteriously walked out on his own two legs. There's only one way that could have happened, he's been turned into a vampire. But what idiot would sire someone and leave them to fend for themselves? This is one of the many questions that Kate gets to contemplate as she's locked up in a dungeon. It turns out the Council isn't too happy about her running through the Prince of Swords ironically with a sword, so she is to stand trial for the murder of Aeglica Thrice-Risen. And Julian can't help her. Because if the Council gets even the slightest hint that the Prince of Cups has feelings for Kate they will kill Kate just to enact revenge on Julian. So Kate's to be brought up before a bunch of people who definitely want her dead. It doesn't help that they're all insane too. But somehow a miracle happens, she's paroled for the time being into the care of Acton, the "father" of Kate's ex, Patrick. She is cocooned in perfect domestic bliss while trying to figure out why someone would want to raise an army of uncontrollable vampires. With her statuesque assistant Elise at her side she realizes that she needs more information than the two of them can access. Therefore Kate turns to her usual sources of information, her exes. Patrick is unable to help because of his new nubile girlfriend, picture Kate fifteen years ago and you get the picture, Eve is now Batman apparently, terrifyingly Corin has escaped from prison, and Nim says that the answer to everything is in the dreams Kate keeps having about a dark force rising in London. A dark force that the Council fears, that is charge of the vampire army, and that could kill Kate in her dreams. Great.
Shadow and Dreams had the chance to flesh out the world of Kate Kane and instead it decided to lean into the pop cultural ephemera that distanced the reader from the narrative in the first book. If the references somehow actually worked within the story I might be more forgiving, but instead Kate appears to not even comprehend all the references so it feels more like the author talking to the reader through Kate without bothering to flesh Kate out. Kate's like Alexis Hall's mouthpiece where she's parroting references to Fifty Shades of Grey and Narnia and very specific YA authors and more fucking Richard Curtis films and even Star Wars without her even knowing what they are. And the worst part is, this makes her seem dumb. I'm not saying she is dumb, I'm saying she has "no intellectual curiosity," and her whole life is suspect. She's very two-dimensional; booze and broads, that's all she's about. She has no other interests, so perhaps the name-checking shared cultural experiences is another way to give her depth without bothering to put in the work, just like how Twilight is her whole backstory. Also, could we start distancing this series from Twilight instead of leaning in because once the spider monkey was brought up it broke me. Just fuck off, enough already. WE GET IT! Here's what Alexis Hall doesn't get, I'm starting to think the Twilight books were better written. I certainly enjoyed them more. I don't want to be reading a pale imitation of the original. Yes, Twilight should be mocked, but the longer the joke goes on the less funny it becomes. It should have been a starting off point instead of the only point. Also, when I said let's move on I didn't mean to start taking plot points from other authors. Every Sherlock Holmes fan will instantly recognize the plot to "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons" and be wondering why it is even in here. I mean really, why!?! The problem I'm having with this series is I can sense what Alexis Hall is trying to do, kind of a female John Constantine, even if Kate's named after another DC superhero, but over two books now this hasn't gelled. Yes, I got some answers this time around, I now know that her apartment and her office are in two separate locations and the drink is to dull the call of her mother's powers, but that isn't enough to build a series on. The concept of Twilight was barely enough to build a series on, a Twilight parody is definitely not enough to build a series on.
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