strange and random happenstance: Pacific Northwest

Dial Witch by Jo-Ann Carson
Published by: Jo-Ann Carson
Publication Date: February 1st, 2022
Format: Kindle, 298 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Now that the regulars know about the supernatural world it's time to come together. To heal the chasm between the haves and have-nots. And what better place than the sleepy little Pacific Northwest town of Mystic Keep which is known as a sanctuary for mages? And that's just what Jane Black plans to do. She wants to help her community, it's what her mother taught her. One should share their talents for the good of all. So on a sunny July day, despite the objections of her family, her familiar, and her mother threatening to disown her, she opens up Dial Witch, the one-stop shop of sorcery in Mystic Keep. And it's like a small fire has been lit in the community. There's a reason mages and regulars aren't meant to mix. When Taupe Halliday accosts Jane in her shop declaiming that her reckless behavior will expose them all perhaps she should have listened. You need to be wary of little old ladies who complain about your shop, they might just be dragons in disguise. Dragons with connections. Which is how Jane, almost before she has her first customer, already has a complaint lodged against her with the Dragon Federation of the ninth. Which means an enforcer will soon be making an appearance in Mystic Keep. But before dragons comes family, and they are just as vocal about her new career path as Taupe Halliday. Family dinners with the witches of the Magnolia Black coven are either heartwarming or terrorizing, depending on Jane's sisters and their spouses. Thankfully they have something more serious to worry about than Jane's little shop. A bounty has been put out on warlock babies. Seeing as her sister Cassie has just had a baby with her husband Sanjay and her older sister Merlina is heavily pregnant with her and her husband Donovan's child, this is worrying to the family. In fact Jane is a little pissed they didn't inform her of it earlier. The fact that she's had only one customer who asked her to murder her husband is nothing compared to what her family is facing. Especially once it's revealed the Kryg, the scum of the multiverse, warriors who share a mutant-cyborg-vampire ancestry, are hunting the babies. But luckily Helios Daragon, commonly known as Leos, who has been sent to shut down Jane's shop because the magistrate, his boss, is Taupe Halliday's nephew, is a man of honor and agrees to help Jane's family. He doesn't even request a quid pro quo as he's instantly smitten with Jane, his trésor, a provocative cross between a feisty wench and an angel. Between a hot dragon trying to shut her down, a bounty on her beloved family members, and a shop that is surprisingly booming, Jane has no time for anything else. So of course a vampire starts to blackmail her and she's kidnapped. Sadly neither of which are unheard of for her. It's just another day in Mystic Keep.

The Dial Witch trilogy is set within the larger Mystic Keep universe, or multiverse as it is, and is billed as a standalone. I am here to tell you that it's not a standalone. This is like watching a once fun show that has gone on too long and is so stuck up its own ass with its mythology that new fans won't engage and old fans keep watching out of habit hoping someone will put it out of its misery. In other words, this is like the last few seasons of Charmed. Maybe at some point, if I could actually figure out where this series started, I would discover it wasn't just characters standing abruptly and stating facts and mentioning in passing events that happened that I have no idea about. This books was at times infuriating in how it doesn't seem to care about the readers or even the characters. There is no development, not forward story, just one thing happening after another and then it's over. But without a real conclusion just two more books to read. Though do I actually believe those two books resolve Jane's story? Oh I so do not. After all she has some backstory with a cop who was turned into a werewolf and she was shunned by his new pack. Again, this isn't gotten into. It's just something that happened and we're moving along, we have magic school and Leo is with the Elders, and nope, I'm confusing this again with the worst of Charmed. But who can blame me when Merlina and her chin act like they are mugging for a camera that doesn't exist and they both have Leos. Though my main problems come down to three sticking points. One, the pull quotes. Each chapter starts with one, some from well known authors, and some obviously so loved by Carson that she uses them more than once, hopefully on purpose. But what author would think Pinterest is a good source for a pull quote to start a chapter!?! A quote that is literally "What did one saggy boob say to another? You better perk up, or they'll think we're nuts." ~ anon, Pinterest" I think that right there is self-explanatory as to why I hate it so much. Two, what the hell is this worldbuilding!?! There are nine dimensions? Realms? Whatever? There are cyborg vampires and real vampires and werewolves and dragon shifters and could someone just explain things to me because the witches aren't from Earth so where the hell are they from!?! Again, a once beloved show on it's last legs. Three, she's giving her customers ED "potions" for their husbands to "cure" them. Who the hell gave her the right to literally give someone a 24/7 hard-on? What's more, this is distilling marital problems down to sex. Yes, sex is important to a marriage, but it's not the only thing. Also, as expected it gets out of hand, see above kidnapping. Overall this book was a lot thrown at you and nothing sticks. It's mildly entertaining but totally forgettable. Oh, and she doesn't even have sex with the dragon. And four, why is her shop called Dial Witch!?! WHY!?!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: An Urban Development, Babies, Blackmail, Bounty, Charmed, Dial Witch, Dragons, Helios Daragon, Jane Black, Jo-Ann Carson, Kidnapping, Magnolia Black Coven, Multiverse, Mystic Keep, Pacific Northwest, Pinterest, Pull Quotes, Trilogy

Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century Book 1) by Cherie Priest
Published by: Tor
Publication Date: September 29th, 2009
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Briar Wilkes lives in the shadow of a great wall and all that happened before it was erected. Within that wall she was married to a great inventor, Leviticus Blue. There he created The Boneshaker, a device to aid in the mining of Alaska, which instead devastated Seattle and released a blight gas that would turn people into the walking undead. Behind the wall Briar's father was sheriff and what he did brought further ridicule to Briar's name. The wall was built to keep the gas and the rotters in. On the day the last brick was laid, Briar gave birth to Levi's son, Zeke. Sixteen years later, life just keeps getting harder.

Zeke has questions, yet his mother would just like to leave the past behind. Learning of an entire population of people in the quarantined area, Zeke decides to go beyond the wall. There's two ways in, under or over, he uses the cities drainage system for a quick excursion to relieve his curiosity about his father and the life his parents lived in a quaint Victorian house, before his father destroyed the city. Upon finding Zeke missing, Briar decides that she must go and rescue her boy from his own stupidity. An earthquake stops her from going under, so she must go over the wall. Zeke searches for answers while Briar aligns herself with a rag tag group of folks who hold her father sacred as she looks for her son.

Going into the unknown, their lives are both constantly in danger, from rotters, blight and from a mysterious underworld boss, Minnericht, who it is rumored, might in fact be Leviticus Blue. Briar needs to find her son and face the past that she has been trying to hide from. If her and Zeke can survive this, maybe Zeke can handle the truth.

Being, in it's most basic form, a Zombie story, it does have the Zombie tropes. Small group of people, striving to survive, some will die, but hopefully some will survive. But Boneshaker overcomes this with the infusion of plucky characters and alt history and a purpose other than survival, with the underlying Minnericht mystery. Also, the trope of endangered child is thankfully not harped on, seeing as Zeke is quite capable in his own way. You could, in essence, say that the story is very much the movie Labyrinth, one of Cherie's favorite Steampunk movies. This weird land beyond a wall has taken Briar's child and she is in constant danger, but due to the friends she makes along the way she is able to have her final showdown and escape the Labyrinth. Though the blight is far scarier than the bog of eternal stench.

A story with a very condensed plot and limited characters, like most survival stories, are at the mercy of those characters. If they are not unique, interesting and believable, the whole house of cards would come falling in on you. Taking just the living characters, Cherie has given us unique people with flaws and foibles that makes you root for them. Briar Wilkes is one of those rare instances where I don't waffle about who she is and what she looks like, I just saw her there instantly in my minds eye. The rough life she's led, after being the bell of the ball, the way the blighted rain has streaked her hair and her clothes, and the introspective life she has become accustomed to living in a world where the only person she can rely on is her son, and he might not even do that if she opened up. Kick ass Western heroine alert here!

Zeke is also an interesting character, in that he's a teenager who puts himself in danger who I didn't spend the entire book hoping he'd die. Yeah, I don't really like those too stupid to live, but at least his decisions once beyond the wall, thankfully take him out of the I want him to die camp. But really, my heart belongs to Lucy O'Gunning, the barkeep who has lost both her arms but thankfully has one robotic one left, who is always upbeat and cheerful, I kind of picture her as Clara from The Guild, where she would love all "the clocky windy stuff" down in the blighted city.

Now the alt history really drew me in as well. Being the time of the civil war, but with obvious mechanical advances that didn't exist, I was interested in how things had changed but stayed the same. I have a feeling Cherie will cover it more in later books, this being a series, but I like how she incorporated elements of really history and how those elements would react to this blight. For example, the Chinese immigrant population was very high in the Pacific Northwest during this time period. From railways to mining, these men where imported to the US, leaving their families behind, to do the jobs no American would do, thank you weird literature class I took in college! Obviously, these people would be so used to adapting to changing situations, that the blight arriving and the wall's erection would actually be, in some respects, good for them. They are able to use their skill sets in order to create an empire under the blighted Seattle that rivals that of Minnericht. Just fascinating, I can't wait to see how else history has been altered!

The mystery of Minnericht to me is actually the driving force of the plot. While, yes, Briar is trying to reunite with her son, that's all well and good, and obviously they have to survive as well, mysteries is what makes books tick for me. Minnericht is an enigma. A man who may or may not be whom everyone thinks he is, though he couldn't possibly comment. Briar is a threat to him. She could confirm or deny the fact. Either way, she is a threat to his way of life. Also, the fact that he has so obviously built up, not just a power base, but an opulent little world, he's like the Lex Luthor or Seattle, because real estate underground is where it's at... yeah, so I just watched Superman again recently... maybe I should just read the next book instead of watching that movie yet again, because once that theme song gets in your head, it's their forever.

Moste Importante Steampunkery:
The technology itself is so amazing in this book. The way the characters have to wear masks to keep the blight out gives the book a claustrophobic air. The Boneshaker itself might be considered the moste Steampunk item, because, it is created and then destroys all the city... but personally, I'm going with Minnericht's invention used by Jeremiah Swakhammer, The Doctor Minnericht Doozy Dazer, called Daisy for short. Capable of emitting an extremely powerful auditory blast that renders the rotters immobile for about three minutes. Sadly, it can take up to fifteen minutes to be ready. But anything that can give a short respite from the rotters is good in my book! Go Daisy go!