The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
(Book #1 of the Gale Women series)
Rating: 🍁
Meh. I only got about half way through this one, which was disappointing. I really wanted to like it, and there were some aspects that I did like, including:
1) The Aunties - Scary, crazy and awesome.
2) Enchanted baked goods - I mean, come on! Who wouldn't love a slice of magic pie?
3) The magic system as a whole, insofar as I could understand it, was fascinating.
4) The unapologetically Canadian context of the story. Seriously, Ms. Huff referenced Tim Hortons and Mr. Dress-up in the first couple of chapters alone, without bothering to explain them to non-Canadian readers. And before any such readers get their danders up, do I really need to mention how many times I've had to look up culturally-specific references from your area? *looks pointedly over reading glasses* I didn't think so.
And yet despite all of this, the book just didn't work for me, for a number of reasons, including:
1) While the magic system was fascinating, it was also confusing and opaque as hell. Apparently it has something to do with nature, and the Gale men transform into some sort of rutting mammal with antlers at certain times of year? And there's sex involved somehow. And circles. And charms. And pie. Umm...yeah.
2) I was kinda squicked out by the bordering-on-incest amount of Gale-on-Gale sex. Supposedly they're all given a list of family members that they're allowed to get it on with, presumably because they're not too closely related? Or is that just who they're allowed to mate with, i.e. for reproductive purposes? Because it seemed to me that Charlie and Allie were cousins, if I'm not mistaken, but that didn't stop them from doing their thing.
3) Mostly, it was just boring. I didn't really like any of the main characters, and the "mystery" didn't really seem to matter. Yes, demons and citizens of the underworld are being allowed to run (or fly) loose in Calgary, but Allie has a date with whats-his-name and ultimately the Aunties won't let anything too bad happen, so no biggie, right?
Maybe if I'd been able to persevere the opacity of the magic would have been cleared up, but there just wasn't enough momentum in the story to make me want to keep wading through the rest.
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