strange and random happenstance

Iron and Velvet by Alexis Hall
Published by: Riptide Publishing
Publication Date: December 14th, 2013
Format: Kindle, 254 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Kate Kane stays away from vampires. Sadly they don't stay away from her. After a disastrous teenage romance with the sparkly Patrick she has learned many things. One is Patrick will never understand that she's gay, and he will forever leave creepy drawings on her pillow of her sleeping. Two is that you don't work for vampires. Especially if it's a vampire prince who is sex on legs. Which Julian Saint-Germain, the Prince of Cups, definitely is. But Kate's a P.I. and a P.I. has to pay the bills, especially if your partner up and got killed on you, and the vampires are willing to pay her the "I don't work for vampires" rate. So she agrees to take a look at their problem. Their problem is a dead werewolf in the alley behind one of Julian's clubs, The Velvet. The werewolf in question is Andrew J.H. Vane-Tempest, who happened to be dating the club's drag queen. He's been drained of blood, but not in a vampiric way. Which makes Kate think that this is political. Shit, she really hates politics. But she's willing to play if they're willing to pay and off she goes to track down the local alpha werewolf, Tara Vane-Tempest, who just happens to be a lingerie model in the middle of a shoot. Now this would be one of the "perks" of the job. The downsides being; being in the middle of a war between vampires, werewolves, and mages, having to deal with so many exes it's almost ridiculous, evil ghostly spirits, oh, and the fact that her mother is the immortal embodiment of an abstract concept making Kate an honest-to-God faery princess, running out of booze, not having money to replace the booze, and inevitably dying because of some stupid job she agreed to. But she is a beloved daughter who will be sorely missed. Though as she delves deeper into the mysterious death of Andrew J.H. Vane-Tempest the inevitable happens, the bodies start to pile up. But Julian doesn't seemed concerned, Julian's only concern seems to be getting into Kate's pants. She plies her with pudding and the past. Being eight-hundred years old means that Julian has quite the history, especially as she was a demon-hunting ninja nun for the Order of St. Agrippina before she was turned. Or as Kate calls her, Sister Julian, Pudding Nun. And oddly enough, Kate's growing quite attached to her pudding nun. The problem is, that pudding nun's life is in danger and if they want a future together they are going to have to fight some serious shit. As in a sewer battle.

This is a review I've drafted over and over again in my head in the hopes of getting it right once I wrote it down. One reason is that when I'm not enjoying a book I'm reading I try to pinpoint why, and this inevitably leads to me marshaling my thoughts in a manner that might look like a loose outline for a review with specific phrases that strike me or possibly just random words that after the fact don't even make sense to me. The other reason is that my friend who recommended this series to me recommended it to me with the caveat that it's one of her favorites. And I don't know about you but when I don't like a book that someone I care about loves, it feels like I'm betraying them so I have to be very clear and concise as to why I feel how I feel. Iron and Velvet has an identity crisis. It doesn't know what it wants to be; noir, urban fantasy, romcom, parody, pastiche, mystery, vampire romance, and on and on. Now a master of the craft can weave all these disparate genres into a beautiful patchwork quilt where concepts and characters that shouldn't work together somehow magically do. Alexis Hall is no master. This is their first book and therefore we are left with scraps that switch from genre to genre like a car with a clunky transmission. And yes, I'm mixing metaphors, but if I was going to be tonally inconsistent, well, this is the book review to do it in. Because this identity crisis of what this book is bleeds into every aspect making it ill defined except for the odd specificity when he's lifting from other source material. Alexis Hall is a magpie unable to create a cohesive whole. You wouldn't be wrong to think Kate Kane is quoting Hugh Grant in Notting Hill for no reason I can figure out, and her entire backstory being the plot to Twilight? You're right there as well. And while it's funny to see that the entire plot of Twilight, all those hundreds and hundreds of pages, can be easily reduced to a couple of paragraphs, this cribbing of Kate's backstory from another source is lazy. Why not merge different vampire teen romance tropes into something unique and original? Because until the sparkling happened, the creepy drawings on the pillow could have been from any obsessed vampire. Therefore I was always kept at a distance from Bella, I mean Kate, because at no time did she attempt to become someone new and original. At least we know she was a "Beloved daughter. Sorely missed." Because she kept mentioning it over and over again. Was there no editing on this book? Because an editor would have said this book needed another pass. It needed some originality and some sense of place. It's just so much surface that after awhile you realize if you're trying to find depth, or why the apartment and the office move around in time in space, that you're never going to find it because there isn't any there there. I'm hoping this is all because it was a first book because otherwise I'm out.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 6:44 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexis Hall, An Urban Development, Bella Swan, Editor, Faery Princess, Hugh Grant, Identity Crisis, Iron and Velvet, Julian Saint-Germain, Kate Kane, London, Noir, Notting Hill, P.I., Pudding Nun, Tropes, Twilight, Vampires, Werewolves

Smoke and Ashes by Alexis Hall
Published by: Carina Press
Publication Date: November 12th, 2020
Format: Kindle, 332 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

About three years ago, shit has it been three years? Kate Kane's life went to hell. Technically literally, but that's another story. Her life was saved but in the process it also fell apart. She was betrayed by her girlfriend, Julian Saint-Germain, once again proving you can never trust vampires, and her best friend, Elise, was turned back into a statue. But the worst fate belonged to her ex Nimue, who lost half her face in the battle for the very soul of London and now lies in a coma. Since then Kate's done exactly what you'd expect her to do, drunkenly wallow. Although the thread count of the sheets in the bed she's been wallowing in have gone drastically up since she started banging Tara Vane-Tempest. Posh werewolves really do have a nice life. Although this posh werewolf is even starting to question Kate's life plan. One can't stay in bed forever drunk. Of course when Kate does get out of Tara's bed she often ends up in someone else's... Which she's not sure if Tara is OK with. But Kate's life is a train wreck so what does it matter if she destroys the one kind of good thing in it? Though things are about to change. Not for the better. The werewolves have been attacked. One was skinned. The perpetrator has links to Kate, links she'd rather not think about because the attacker happens to be the vampire that sired Patrick, her intolerable ex who is still listening to "Clair de Lune" on repeat. Her arrival would be problematic enough if she hadn't teamed up with the vampire who almost killed Kate three years previously, Sebastian Douglas, who has allied himself with the Queen of Winter, the King of Shadows. This is a clusterfuck of vengeance coming right for Kate and those few people she still tries to care about even if she's kind of lost touch with them. But Kate knows things are really about to kick off when her prophetic dreams return. The green lady who is and isn't Nimue tells Kate that all that is wrong is because Nim's life is in the balance. She needs to be killed or restored so that London can recover. Of course Kate doesn't want Nim to die, which means she has to find the Holy Grail. Yes, THAT Holy Grail.

How would I describe Smoke and Ashes? A damn stupid interminable vision quest without an actual ending. This volume, and to an extent the previous volume, seem to be prologue to whatever is coming in the final volume, Time and Tide, which is now two years overdue. Not that I actually care. Other than if the final volume was out I could read it and then never look back. Because all that I mildly enjoyed in this series has been slowly stripped away. The narrowing of focus has made this nothing more than bad King Arthur fanfic. And I like King Arthur fanfic, my love of Merlin, both the campy BBC series and the Sam Neill miniseries, should be enough to prove my bona fides. But I can't stand this. This stripping down of characters, this myopic drunken vision quest. If you would have told me I'd react so strongly to the removal of a Pudding Nun and Pygmalion I would have laughed at you. And I would have been so so wrong. And yes, I know Pygmalion was the sculptor, it just has such a nice alliterative ring that I couldn't pass it up. Taking away the most "memorable" characters has been tantamount to suicide. The supposed three years since the events of the previous book has seen Kate become a committed drunken whore. Which proves to me, time and again, that the main problem with this whole series is it's star, Kate Kane. And this volume really let me get to the heart of why I hate here. Kate is an immature ass. Literally. She has no emotional maturity. I mean, this could have something to do with Patrick and her traumatic teens, that somehow her development has been stunted at a time in her life where she wasn't fully formed and instead of dealing with the trauma she has created a persona versus a personality. But this might just be me trying to justify her being drunk in Tara's bed for three years. Because Kate is what an ill-informed teenager would think a PI is, a drunk who bangs the dames. Yes, I guess this could be a valid life choice, but it's so damn depressing and nihilistic. Kate's always assumed she'd die young so she doesn't bother to work on herself, she doesn't actually try, she's willing to stay childish, even needing bedtime stories. She stumbles around when she has to, but really, if you think about all her actions, they are really only reactions. I want to smack her and tell to grow the fuck up. But I really don't think that would help, she knows how to take a punch.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexis Hall, Drunk, Elise, Fanfiction, Holy Grail, Julian Saint-Germain, Kate Kane, King Arthur, London Calling, Merlin, Nimue, P.I., Sam Neill, Smoke and Ashes, Tara Vane-Tempest, Time and Tide, Vampires, Werewolves

Shadows and Dreams by Alexis Hall
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.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexis Hall, Femme Fatale, John Constantine, Julian Saint-Germain, Kate Kane, London Calling, Noir, Parody, Shadows and Dreams, Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, Twilight, Vampires

Iron and Velvet by Alexis Hall
Published by: Riptide Publishing
Publication Date: December 14th, 2013
Format: Kindle, 254 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Kate Kane stays away from vampires. Sadly they don't stay away from her. After a disastrous teenage romance with the sparkly Patrick she has learned many things. One is Patrick will never understand that she's gay and will forever leave creepy drawings on her pillow of her sleeping. Two is that you don't work for vampires. Especially if it's a vampire prince who is sex on legs. Which Julian Saint-Germain, the Prince of Cups, definitely is. But Kate's a P.I. and a P.I. has to pay the bills, especially if your partner up and got killed on you, and the vampires are willing to pay her the "I don't work for vampires" rate. So she agrees to take a look at their problem. Their problem is a dead werewolf in the alley behind one of Julian's clubs, The Velvet. The werewolf in question is Andrew J.H. Vane-Tempest, who happened to be dating the club's drag queen. He's been drained of blood, but not in a vampiric way. Which makes Kate think that this is political. Shit, she really hates politics. But she's willing to play if they're willing to pay and off she goes to track down the local alpha werewolf, Tara Vane-Tempest, who just happens to be a lingerie model in the middle of a shoot. Now this would be one of the "perks" of the job. The downsides being; being in the middle of a war between vampires, werewolves, and mages, having to deal with so many exes it's almost ridiculous, evil ghostly spirits, oh, and the fact that her mother is the immortal embodiment of an abstract concept making Kate an honest-to-God faery princess, running out of booze, not having money to replace the booze, and inevitably dying because of some stupid job she agreed to. But she is a beloved daughter who will be sorely missed. Though as she delves deeper into the mysterious death of Andrew J.H. Vane-Tempest the inevitable happens, the bodies start to pile up. But Julian doesn't seemed concerned, Julian's only concern seems to be getting into Kate's pants. She plies her with pudding and the past. Being eight-hundred years old means that Julian has quite the history, especially as she was a demon-hunting ninja nun for the Order of St. Agrippina before she was turned. Or as Kate calls her, Sister Julian, Pudding Nun. And oddly enough, Kate's growing quite attached to her pudding nun. The problem is, that pudding nun's life is in danger and if they want a future together they are going to have to fight some serious shit. As in sewer battle.

This is a review I've drafted over and over again in my head in the hopes of getting it right once I wrote it down. One reason is that when I'm not enjoying a book I'm reading I try to pinpoint why, and this inevitably leads to me marshaling my thoughts in a manner that might look like a loose outline for a review with specific phrases that strike me or possibly just random words that after the fact don't even make sense to me. The other reason is that my friend who recommended this series to me recommended it to me with the caveat that it's one of her favorites. And I don't know about you but when I don't like a book that someone I care about loves, it feels like I'm betraying them so I have to be very clear and concise as to why I feel how I feel. Iron and Velvet has an identity crisis. It doesn't know what it wants to be; noir, urban fantasy, romcom, parody, pastiche, mystery, vampire romance, and on and on. Now a master of the craft can weave all these disparate genres into a beautiful patchwork quilt where concepts and characters that shouldn't work together somehow magically do. Alexis Hall is no master. This is his first book and therefore we are left with scraps that switch from genre to genre like a car with a clunky transmission. And yes, I'm mixing metaphors, but if I was going to be tonally inconsistent, well, this is the book review to do it in. Because this identity crisis of what this book is bleeds into every aspect making it ill defined except for the odd specificity when he's lifting from other source material. Alexia Hall is a magpie unable to create a cohesive whole. You wouldn't be wrong to think Kate Kane is quoting Hugh Grant in Notting Hill for no reason I can figure out, and her entire backstory being the plot to Twilight? You're right there as well. And while it's funny to see that the entire plot of Twilight, all those hundreds and hundreds of pages, can be easily reduced to a couple of paragraphs, this cribbing of Kate's backstory from another source is lazy. Why not merge different vampire teen romance tropes into something unique and original? Because until the sparkling happened, the creepy drawings on the pillow could have been from any obsessed vampire. Therefore I was always kept at a distance from Bella, I mean Kate, because at no time did she attempt to become someone new and original. At least we know she was a "Beloved daughter. Sorely missed." Because she kept mentioning it over and over again. Was there no editing on this book? Because an editor would have said this book needed another pass. It needed some originality and some sense of place. It's just so much surface that after awhile you realize if you're trying to find depth, or why the apartment and the office move around in time in space, that you're never going to find it because there isn't any there there. I'm hoping this is all because it was a first book because otherwise I'm in for a long slog.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexis Hall, Bella Swan, Editor, Faery Princess, Hugh Grant, Identity Crisis, Iron and Velvet, Julian Saint-Germain, Kate Kane, London Calling, Noir, Notting Hill, P.I., Pudding Nun, Twilight, Vampires, Werewolves