Book Review: The Awful Truth About Forgetting, by L. Jagi Lamplighter
The fourth book in the Fem!Harry fan fiction series.
Wisecraft Publishing, 2017, 452 pages
What she knows, she dare not tell. Rachel Griffin should be having an amazing freshman year. She has the Princess of Magical Australia and crazy orphan Sigfried the Dragonslayer for friends and a handsome sorcerer boyfriend romancing her with charms magical and otherwise. But otherworldly forces conspire against those she loves. While all others can be made to forget the truth, Rachel cannot. When she runs afoul of the hidden force responsible for hiding these terrible secrets, Rachel must face her most desperate hour yet. This on top of winter fairies, missing friends, Yule gifts, flying practice, and a rampaging ogre…oh, and schoolwork. Then there is the matter of a certain undeniably attractive older boy…
Okay, I have to be honest here. I'm pushing onward with this series because it is charming and cute in places and I really liked the first book, which was absolutely "What if Harry Potter was a girl going to an American wizarding school?" fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off. But... despite this being trade published (albeit through a very small press), the author seems to have fallen prey to the same tendency to bloat her work that actual fan fiction does. Each Rachel Griffin book is about 400 pages, and at the end of book four, we've covered.... the first semester of her freshman year.
Also, the worldbuilding takes a kitchen-sink approach to myths and magic, there are way too many characters, I can't keep track of all the storylines, and sometimes the writing is just not great.
That may sound harsh, but this series has very much fallen into the "guilty pleasure" category for me. Basically, see my reviews of earlier books in the series: the author based this series on an RPG campaign she and her husband play in (one of the most chaotic and annoying characters in the book is her husband's PC) and at times the story absolutely reads like an RPG session where the players are being munchkins and forcing the GM to make shit up on the fly.
The world of Rachel Griffin is, as I said, basically a Harry Potter-like wizarding world where the Wise keep their world hidden from the Unwary. Lady Rachel Griffin is the 13-year-old half-Korean daughter of the Duchess of Devon who also happens to be a witch. She is tiny, adorable, and has perfect recall (she can literally sift through her memories in a split-second like a living computer). She's phenomenally skilled with a broom and is supposedly destined to become the Librarian of All Worlds.
Does this sound like a Player Character or what?
For some reason, royalty from all over the world go to the Roanoke School of Magic in the U.S. So Rachel for the past three books has been sorting out a mystery she stumbled upon in the first book: what are "churches" and "angels"? See, in this world, everyone worships pagan gods and there's no such thing as Christianity (or Judaism or Islam, apparently). And my suspicion from book one has proven correct: just as wizards use magic to keep the Unwary from knowing about their world, some powerful force has made the entire world forget about the existence of, well, God.
Yes, it's that kind of series. Rachel is slowly unwrapping the Christian allegory, having made friends first with an Aslan-like lion, and now becoming friends with a being known as the Raven, who is actually the angel Jariel. She learns that her best friend's grandfather is a villainous being whom Rachel dubs "The Master of the World" after a villain from a Jules Verne novel, but an obvious allusion to Satan.
Rachel almost got sacrificed to Moloch in the last book. The world was once almost taken over by the Terrible Five, consisting of Simon Magus, Baba Yaga, Morgana Le Fay, Koschei the Deathless, and Aleister Crowley.
So the setting is kind of nuts, like a Marvel comic + Harry Potter + Narnia. But it's still fun if goofy. And yet so very long. And so very many side plots and minor characters making me go "Wait, who was this again and why do I care?"
Such advancement as occurs in this book consists of Rachel slowly learning more about the secret history of the world and her role in it. So far there has been no mention of the J-word, but Rachel is kinda sorta becoming devoted to a higher power that she doesn't fully conceptualize yet.
The action consists of her father losing his memories, and Rachel and her friends taking on an immortal ogre. And a few other things, but still, it's an awful lot of pages for relatively little passage of time.
And then there is a bunch of girly feelings treacle. Rachel looks to male authority figures to a degree that's a little uncomfortable, and would frankly be a little creepy if written by a male author. She bounces between her 16-year-old boyfriend and the 19-year-old BMOC for candidate Daddy replacement, before realizing that no, actually the angel Jariel should be "captain of her heart." There are a lot of scenes of either Gaius (the boyfriend) or Valiant Von Dread (yes, seriously), the BMOC, picking her up like a small child. It seems to be meant wholesomely (this isn't a Piers Anthony novel) but it's wholesome the way a Purity Ball is wholesome.
As a work of "unauthorized fan fiction," this is a fun if at times strangely creepy series. But if RPG tropes mixed with weird Christian allegory written in a very girly tone isn't your thing, you might find it offputting. I find it offputting, but I'm invested enough now that I want to see where the author is going to go.
Also by L. Jagi Lamplighter: My reviews of The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel, and Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland.
My complete list of book reviews.
Wisecraft Publishing, 2017, 452 pages
What she knows, she dare not tell. Rachel Griffin should be having an amazing freshman year. She has the Princess of Magical Australia and crazy orphan Sigfried the Dragonslayer for friends and a handsome sorcerer boyfriend romancing her with charms magical and otherwise. But otherworldly forces conspire against those she loves. While all others can be made to forget the truth, Rachel cannot. When she runs afoul of the hidden force responsible for hiding these terrible secrets, Rachel must face her most desperate hour yet. This on top of winter fairies, missing friends, Yule gifts, flying practice, and a rampaging ogre…oh, and schoolwork. Then there is the matter of a certain undeniably attractive older boy…
Okay, I have to be honest here. I'm pushing onward with this series because it is charming and cute in places and I really liked the first book, which was absolutely "What if Harry Potter was a girl going to an American wizarding school?" fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off. But... despite this being trade published (albeit through a very small press), the author seems to have fallen prey to the same tendency to bloat her work that actual fan fiction does. Each Rachel Griffin book is about 400 pages, and at the end of book four, we've covered.... the first semester of her freshman year.
Also, the worldbuilding takes a kitchen-sink approach to myths and magic, there are way too many characters, I can't keep track of all the storylines, and sometimes the writing is just not great.
That may sound harsh, but this series has very much fallen into the "guilty pleasure" category for me. Basically, see my reviews of earlier books in the series: the author based this series on an RPG campaign she and her husband play in (one of the most chaotic and annoying characters in the book is her husband's PC) and at times the story absolutely reads like an RPG session where the players are being munchkins and forcing the GM to make shit up on the fly.
The world of Rachel Griffin is, as I said, basically a Harry Potter-like wizarding world where the Wise keep their world hidden from the Unwary. Lady Rachel Griffin is the 13-year-old half-Korean daughter of the Duchess of Devon who also happens to be a witch. She is tiny, adorable, and has perfect recall (she can literally sift through her memories in a split-second like a living computer). She's phenomenally skilled with a broom and is supposedly destined to become the Librarian of All Worlds.
Does this sound like a Player Character or what?
For some reason, royalty from all over the world go to the Roanoke School of Magic in the U.S. So Rachel for the past three books has been sorting out a mystery she stumbled upon in the first book: what are "churches" and "angels"? See, in this world, everyone worships pagan gods and there's no such thing as Christianity (or Judaism or Islam, apparently). And my suspicion from book one has proven correct: just as wizards use magic to keep the Unwary from knowing about their world, some powerful force has made the entire world forget about the existence of, well, God.
Yes, it's that kind of series. Rachel is slowly unwrapping the Christian allegory, having made friends first with an Aslan-like lion, and now becoming friends with a being known as the Raven, who is actually the angel Jariel. She learns that her best friend's grandfather is a villainous being whom Rachel dubs "The Master of the World" after a villain from a Jules Verne novel, but an obvious allusion to Satan.
Rachel almost got sacrificed to Moloch in the last book. The world was once almost taken over by the Terrible Five, consisting of Simon Magus, Baba Yaga, Morgana Le Fay, Koschei the Deathless, and Aleister Crowley.
So the setting is kind of nuts, like a Marvel comic + Harry Potter + Narnia. But it's still fun if goofy. And yet so very long. And so very many side plots and minor characters making me go "Wait, who was this again and why do I care?"
Such advancement as occurs in this book consists of Rachel slowly learning more about the secret history of the world and her role in it. So far there has been no mention of the J-word, but Rachel is kinda sorta becoming devoted to a higher power that she doesn't fully conceptualize yet.
The action consists of her father losing his memories, and Rachel and her friends taking on an immortal ogre. And a few other things, but still, it's an awful lot of pages for relatively little passage of time.
And then there is a bunch of girly feelings treacle. Rachel looks to male authority figures to a degree that's a little uncomfortable, and would frankly be a little creepy if written by a male author. She bounces between her 16-year-old boyfriend and the 19-year-old BMOC for candidate Daddy replacement, before realizing that no, actually the angel Jariel should be "captain of her heart." There are a lot of scenes of either Gaius (the boyfriend) or Valiant Von Dread (yes, seriously), the BMOC, picking her up like a small child. It seems to be meant wholesomely (this isn't a Piers Anthony novel) but it's wholesome the way a Purity Ball is wholesome.
As a work of "unauthorized fan fiction," this is a fun if at times strangely creepy series. But if RPG tropes mixed with weird Christian allegory written in a very girly tone isn't your thing, you might find it offputting. I find it offputting, but I'm invested enough now that I want to see where the author is going to go.
Also by L. Jagi Lamplighter: My reviews of The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, The Raven, The Elf, and Rachel, and Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland.
My complete list of book reviews.