Amph Kelly Gay - The Better Part of Darkness

Has anyone else read this book? Brand new author writing what I'd call a female Dresden with a twist. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I tend to pick up a lot of new books in this genre and sometimes can't get all the way through them but this one I didn't want to put down.

The only problem is that I fear she made the first enemy too big and am wondering how she's going to top it.

 

Haven't heard of her, but she sounds interesting (oh, Raven! ).

 

The prose is good, bordering on very good. My issues with the book stem from the plotting.

First of all, while it's not really a game-breaker, the woman who tracks down criminals and who has strange powers as a result of her temporary death has been done before by Kat Richardson's Greywalker books. In all fairness, there are substantial differences; one is a cop, one is a PI; one can just see ghosts, the other is apparently a superhero.

That last point is an item that I disliked. In the first book, Charlie is established as a major power, equal to just about anything in heaven and hell. While there is nothing specifically wrong with that, it does reduce narrative possibilities to some extent when the main character is able to wave her hand and get out of anything, once she figures out what she's doing. The "I don't know how this works" factor is her greatest limitation at the moment.

That was one of the things that Butcher did well even in the early Dresden Files books - Harry's power scaling has been very consistent. Harry was against people out of his weight class in books three, four and five, but in each of those books he was able to win (scratch that: survive) due to heavy assistance from powerful allies. Charlie has been created as a character who from the onset is a super-heavyweight.

The book suffers to some extent from the "female main character that everyone lusts after" syndrome. It's most evident in the early chapters, fading as the book progresses. I may be jumping to conclusions, but that's the impression it gives. There seems to be at least two obvious candidates for future sexual hijinks, and there's a third that I expect may enter the sweepstakes down the road as the mysterious bad boy boyfriend.

The actual plot of the book itself felt somewhat incomplete and unfocused. There wasn't enough narrative drive to make the majority of the characters interesting, and I thought that perhaps too many characters were introduced in an early book in the probable series. The result is that most of the characters aren't sufficiently developed to really generate emotional impact. One plotline with Charlie's husband had potential to hit a strong emotional response, but due to the lack of build-up of the character it effectively fell flat. Had the husband been built up somewhat, made into a more solid character, the plotline could have had some emotional punch; as things stood, it didn't.

All in all, I'd give it a 3/5. Worth reading, entertaining enough, the prose is some of the better and more readable prose in the urban fantasy genre. I'll happily pick up a second book in this series, and hope that Ms. Gay hasn't written herself into a corner. It's not the Dresden Files, but even the Dresden Files weren't the Dresden Files that I love until about book five.

 

I agree with a lot of that. I like series that have a large cast though, so the fact that they weren't fleshed out yet didn't bother me as I am assuming throughout the series I will get to learn more and its something to look forward to. I'm not sure the husband thing was supposed to pack an emotional punch. Some of the text indicated a little of that, but really I think its a set up for something far greater down the road and I'm willing to be patient.

Like I mentioned in my first post, I too fear that she made her character too powerful to begin with however, she was careful to show the reader that she did need help and then surrounded her with powerful allies who helped her through the conflict. So I don't think its that far off from how Dresden worked.

Have you read anything by Linda Robertson? I just finished Hallowed Circle (I read about a book a day while on vacation so I'm flying through these things.) Its the second in the series and I didn't read the first but I don't think that was a hindrance. I have no idea why, but I felt more invested in the characters of this book. I even cried during one part. I love books that can make me do that. I felt like nothing happened in the book though so I was left feeling empty.