Unfinished Reviews - Witchling
How this got started
I got this book online when I wanted to read some Urban Fantasy. For the record, I got this book early December of 2014. It took me almost four months to get to chapter 9; that’s 119 pages out of 276 pages. I wasn’t expected much, just a fun and entertaining romp about three half-faerie sisters fighting demons. Instead, I was bored out of my mind, and have since moved on to better books (shameless plug: Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Fiona Staples). So let’s talk about the Paranormal Romance Witchling by Yasmine Galenorn.
World-building
The story takes place in a city in Seattle where magical and supernatural beings are known to the public. Kinda like Shambles: Zombie PI, but without sentient zombies. The main world of the magical beings is called…Otherworld, which I have to admit, is very generic (though I did some research and found that the term ‘Otherworld’ has religious connections with Indo-European, Celtic, Germanic, and Greek cultures. Point you, Mythology.). Which is a bit of a problem as the world is big, but it feels very standard, not helped by the fact that terms are thrown at you but they’re not fully explained. The first chapter alone has acronyms, groups, and exposition just dumped on you without a moment’s rest.
I also have a bit of nitpick. The main characters, the D’Artigo sisters, are half-faerie. With me so far? ‘Faerie’ seems to be the catch-all term for those of Otherworld. So what in the world are the sisters? We meet a character that’s a specific type of faerie, so what does that make the sisters? Are they elves, very tall pixies? What makes it more confusing is that one of the sisters is a were-cat. What are you?
Plot, prose, and progression
The plot is a standard ‘Get the Macguffins to stop Bad Guy from doing X’. It’s really cliché, but clichés, when done right, can create compelling stories, subventions, and/or a tongue-and-cheek narrative. Unfortunately, the story plays itself very straight, which is very, very, very boring. The pace doesn’t help either, taking its sweet time getting anywhere, even if it’s something pointless. Like there’s a chapter where the main narrator Camille takes her sister Menolly to a vampire anonymous meeting. Okay, sounds interesting, right? Not only do we not see the entire meeting, but they were supposed to be investigating the murder of their friend.
The prose could also use some work. It’s really wordy and that has the problem of being bloated. It tries to be funny and ‘sexy’, but just sounds juvenile. The dialog adds to that as the characters don’t sound like adults, they sound like vapid teenyboppers. When Camille is describing herself, she says that she has a ‘J-Lo-esque butt’. J-LO-ESQUE BUTT! What am I supposed to do with that?
Character effectiveness
These character were…eh. Let’s talk about the side character first before I talk about main ones. None of the side characters really jumped out at me, having little personality beyond be nice/mean to the sisters. Chase, the sisters’ superior, is supposed to be this power-hungry letch, but I never saw this desire for power and when he did something lecherous, it comes out of nowhere as well as be very inappropriate for a higher ranking employee engaging in sexual harassment.
As for the D’Artigo sisters themselves, they were meh. Camille is the sexy socialite, Delilah is the innocent one, and Menolly is the angsty one since she’s been turned into a vampire. They’re supposed to be agents for a magical version of the FBI and have been tasked to stop a big evil plan, but they don’t take their job very seriously. In fact, they do everything to avoid doing their job. Like that the aforementioned vampire anonymous meeting, Delilah was supposed to be looking for someone who might have been with their friend, who was brutally murdered by garrote. What does she do instead? Watch Sex and the City. Oi.
There’s also Camille sleeping with her ex-boyfriend just ’cause. No, really, she was just really in the mood and took him to bed. Take your time, I’m sure the Big Bad is doing nothing. Camille tries to pass her attraction to the guy as love, but all the things she ever mentions about him is how hot he is; honestly, they should have been friends with benefits given how little importance he had up to the chapter where I stopped reading.
The sisters are Mary Sues, no doubt about that. They’re all stunningly beautiful with perfect boobies and nice booties (’cause who wants to read a book about average/ugly/bony/overweight/muscular women?), attract the attention of handsome dudes, and despite Camille’s spells going haywire, Delilah changing into a cat when stressed, and Menolly being not trusted due to being a vampire, have been tasked with saving the world due to Reasons. They also suffer from Half-Breed Angst, which feels forced as Camille says she feels like an outsider, but so got it pretty good on Earth. Heck, the sisters were invited to the summer home of a movie star because she likes faeries. Hard to say you’re not wanted yet reap nothing but benefits.
Main characters
• Camille D’Artigo-the main heroine and narrator of the book. The oldest of the sisters, she’s a witch whose spells tend to backfire often. I didn’t like her for two reasons. One is her vanity. Whenever she describes herself, it’s always very pleasing, reveling in how beautiful she is. It’s one thing to be confident about your appearance, it’s another to be self-absorbed. Lucky, her vanity coming up in-story is a ‘sometimes’ and not an ‘always’. The one thing that’s always is her bigotry towards humans. She treats humans as though they were mentally handicapped and uses ‘full-blooded humans’ (FBH for short) practically like a slur. Camille treats her human-blood, her mother’s side, as the weakness that prevents her from mastering magic. It’s a bit disconcerting that the only humans she likes are the ones that give her stuff and compliment her; everyone else, like two young women wanting to know about faeries, are annoyances to her. Camille really is an unpleasant person.
• Delilah D’Artigo-the middle sister who turns into a were-cat whenever she’s stressed. She repeatedly considered the innocent one…and that’s about it for this book. Delilah is a private detective, but she didn’t use much of her skills as Camille and their boss did most of the heavy lifting. She was kinda a non-character for several chapters, sometimes showing to be ‘sweet’, only to disappear later. This is more the weakness of first-person POV; if this was third-person, we could follow her as she investigates and keep some form of pace.
• Menolly D’Artigo-the youngest sister that was tragically turned into a vampire after being tortured. While that is indeed tragic, it’s mainly used to serve angst as she goes through the standard ‘being a vampire sucks’ phase, and yes, pun intended. If you’ve read vampire fiction then you know her character arc is probably learning to live with being a vampire, and scoring the hot dude from her vampire anonymous meeting. However, a thing that separates her most vampire characters is that she has no difficulty with her bloodlust. In that she has no problem killing people when she feeds. Yeah, the moral quandaries about taking a life to nourish your own are ignored, with many of the victims considered criminals and such. I could go on a whole spiel about how messed up this is, but I’ll save that for another day.
• Bad Ass Luke-the main…really? Bad Ass Luke? You’re serious with that name? Oh my God. He’s the main baddie of the book, the guy who killed the sisters’ friend and has possibly the dumbest name for a villain since Darken Rahl. I’m seriously chuckling right now. Luke is his name shorted by their father, but Bad Ass was sisters’ idea ’cause he’s so tough, not realizing it has the opposite effect. Any tension from this guy is let out like air from a balloon. What’ worse is that there’s build-up about how dangerous Luke is and yet nobody prepares for any encounters with him, Camille going as far as lingerie shopping. If the characters can’t take him seriously, then how could I?
• Shadow Wing-what is with these names? He’s the new king of Hell after overthrowing the pervious king (who I’m guessing was Satan) and wants to invade Earth and Otherworld. Was Shadow Wing really the best name? This isn’t like a translation of Alael’Ahtan ‘The Wings that Shadow the World’, he’s just called Shadow Wing and it’s expected to be taken seriously. Weak.
So in the end
I didn’t have high expectations for Witchling. Paranormal Romance has never been my cup of tea and I knew it wasn’t going to be my new favorite book. I wanted to have fun though, not force myself to continue reading. If you want to read it, that’s cool, it might get better later on. As for me, I might try again much, much later.
I got this book online when I wanted to read some Urban Fantasy. For the record, I got this book early December of 2014. It took me almost four months to get to chapter 9; that’s 119 pages out of 276 pages. I wasn’t expected much, just a fun and entertaining romp about three half-faerie sisters fighting demons. Instead, I was bored out of my mind, and have since moved on to better books (shameless plug: Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and drawn by Fiona Staples). So let’s talk about the Paranormal Romance Witchling by Yasmine Galenorn.
World-building
The story takes place in a city in Seattle where magical and supernatural beings are known to the public. Kinda like Shambles: Zombie PI, but without sentient zombies. The main world of the magical beings is called…Otherworld, which I have to admit, is very generic (though I did some research and found that the term ‘Otherworld’ has religious connections with Indo-European, Celtic, Germanic, and Greek cultures. Point you, Mythology.). Which is a bit of a problem as the world is big, but it feels very standard, not helped by the fact that terms are thrown at you but they’re not fully explained. The first chapter alone has acronyms, groups, and exposition just dumped on you without a moment’s rest.
I also have a bit of nitpick. The main characters, the D’Artigo sisters, are half-faerie. With me so far? ‘Faerie’ seems to be the catch-all term for those of Otherworld. So what in the world are the sisters? We meet a character that’s a specific type of faerie, so what does that make the sisters? Are they elves, very tall pixies? What makes it more confusing is that one of the sisters is a were-cat. What are you?
Plot, prose, and progression
The plot is a standard ‘Get the Macguffins to stop Bad Guy from doing X’. It’s really cliché, but clichés, when done right, can create compelling stories, subventions, and/or a tongue-and-cheek narrative. Unfortunately, the story plays itself very straight, which is very, very, very boring. The pace doesn’t help either, taking its sweet time getting anywhere, even if it’s something pointless. Like there’s a chapter where the main narrator Camille takes her sister Menolly to a vampire anonymous meeting. Okay, sounds interesting, right? Not only do we not see the entire meeting, but they were supposed to be investigating the murder of their friend.
The prose could also use some work. It’s really wordy and that has the problem of being bloated. It tries to be funny and ‘sexy’, but just sounds juvenile. The dialog adds to that as the characters don’t sound like adults, they sound like vapid teenyboppers. When Camille is describing herself, she says that she has a ‘J-Lo-esque butt’. J-LO-ESQUE BUTT! What am I supposed to do with that?
Character effectiveness
These character were…eh. Let’s talk about the side character first before I talk about main ones. None of the side characters really jumped out at me, having little personality beyond be nice/mean to the sisters. Chase, the sisters’ superior, is supposed to be this power-hungry letch, but I never saw this desire for power and when he did something lecherous, it comes out of nowhere as well as be very inappropriate for a higher ranking employee engaging in sexual harassment.
As for the D’Artigo sisters themselves, they were meh. Camille is the sexy socialite, Delilah is the innocent one, and Menolly is the angsty one since she’s been turned into a vampire. They’re supposed to be agents for a magical version of the FBI and have been tasked to stop a big evil plan, but they don’t take their job very seriously. In fact, they do everything to avoid doing their job. Like that the aforementioned vampire anonymous meeting, Delilah was supposed to be looking for someone who might have been with their friend, who was brutally murdered by garrote. What does she do instead? Watch Sex and the City. Oi.
There’s also Camille sleeping with her ex-boyfriend just ’cause. No, really, she was just really in the mood and took him to bed. Take your time, I’m sure the Big Bad is doing nothing. Camille tries to pass her attraction to the guy as love, but all the things she ever mentions about him is how hot he is; honestly, they should have been friends with benefits given how little importance he had up to the chapter where I stopped reading.
The sisters are Mary Sues, no doubt about that. They’re all stunningly beautiful with perfect boobies and nice booties (’cause who wants to read a book about average/ugly/bony/overweight/muscular women?), attract the attention of handsome dudes, and despite Camille’s spells going haywire, Delilah changing into a cat when stressed, and Menolly being not trusted due to being a vampire, have been tasked with saving the world due to Reasons. They also suffer from Half-Breed Angst, which feels forced as Camille says she feels like an outsider, but so got it pretty good on Earth. Heck, the sisters were invited to the summer home of a movie star because she likes faeries. Hard to say you’re not wanted yet reap nothing but benefits.
Main characters
• Camille D’Artigo-the main heroine and narrator of the book. The oldest of the sisters, she’s a witch whose spells tend to backfire often. I didn’t like her for two reasons. One is her vanity. Whenever she describes herself, it’s always very pleasing, reveling in how beautiful she is. It’s one thing to be confident about your appearance, it’s another to be self-absorbed. Lucky, her vanity coming up in-story is a ‘sometimes’ and not an ‘always’. The one thing that’s always is her bigotry towards humans. She treats humans as though they were mentally handicapped and uses ‘full-blooded humans’ (FBH for short) practically like a slur. Camille treats her human-blood, her mother’s side, as the weakness that prevents her from mastering magic. It’s a bit disconcerting that the only humans she likes are the ones that give her stuff and compliment her; everyone else, like two young women wanting to know about faeries, are annoyances to her. Camille really is an unpleasant person.
• Delilah D’Artigo-the middle sister who turns into a were-cat whenever she’s stressed. She repeatedly considered the innocent one…and that’s about it for this book. Delilah is a private detective, but she didn’t use much of her skills as Camille and their boss did most of the heavy lifting. She was kinda a non-character for several chapters, sometimes showing to be ‘sweet’, only to disappear later. This is more the weakness of first-person POV; if this was third-person, we could follow her as she investigates and keep some form of pace.
• Menolly D’Artigo-the youngest sister that was tragically turned into a vampire after being tortured. While that is indeed tragic, it’s mainly used to serve angst as she goes through the standard ‘being a vampire sucks’ phase, and yes, pun intended. If you’ve read vampire fiction then you know her character arc is probably learning to live with being a vampire, and scoring the hot dude from her vampire anonymous meeting. However, a thing that separates her most vampire characters is that she has no difficulty with her bloodlust. In that she has no problem killing people when she feeds. Yeah, the moral quandaries about taking a life to nourish your own are ignored, with many of the victims considered criminals and such. I could go on a whole spiel about how messed up this is, but I’ll save that for another day.
• Bad Ass Luke-the main…really? Bad Ass Luke? You’re serious with that name? Oh my God. He’s the main baddie of the book, the guy who killed the sisters’ friend and has possibly the dumbest name for a villain since Darken Rahl. I’m seriously chuckling right now. Luke is his name shorted by their father, but Bad Ass was sisters’ idea ’cause he’s so tough, not realizing it has the opposite effect. Any tension from this guy is let out like air from a balloon. What’ worse is that there’s build-up about how dangerous Luke is and yet nobody prepares for any encounters with him, Camille going as far as lingerie shopping. If the characters can’t take him seriously, then how could I?
• Shadow Wing-what is with these names? He’s the new king of Hell after overthrowing the pervious king (who I’m guessing was Satan) and wants to invade Earth and Otherworld. Was Shadow Wing really the best name? This isn’t like a translation of Alael’Ahtan ‘The Wings that Shadow the World’, he’s just called Shadow Wing and it’s expected to be taken seriously. Weak.
So in the end
I didn’t have high expectations for Witchling. Paranormal Romance has never been my cup of tea and I knew it wasn’t going to be my new favorite book. I wanted to have fun though, not force myself to continue reading. If you want to read it, that’s cool, it might get better later on. As for me, I might try again much, much later.