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A review by schomj
Motor City Witch by Cindy Spencer Pape
2.0
category romance, urban fantasy-lite, plot moppets -- if that combination of things sounds appealing to you, I think you would like this. It really didn't work for me, though.
The good: Carina Press. The copy editing was really well done and the book was available in non-DRM ePub format, which means I could read it on my iPod or on my laptop with no problems. Win!
The ok: The plotting. It mostly made sense and was a fairly interesting storyline, although I do hope that at some point the author explains why the villain wants to take over Detroit. There was brief mention of other places in the world, but mostly my response was... Why Detroit? Why not Raleigh or Beijing or someplace else? I'm willing to roll with it, but I need to understand the strategic importance of Detroit in this world.
The bad: The world-building.
Very loosely sketched out. I never really got a feel for the cultures of the different races or any of the locations. It was like the author took a bunch of fantasy tropes, threw them in a blender, and came out with a mess. It might work for category romance, where the focus is more on the character development, but as an attempt at urban fantasy it was pretty much a fail.
The really bad: The characters. I won't go into the secondary characters, since even the primaries were so poorly sketched out as to be stick figures.
Dina, the daughter of Elise and the maybe-daughter of Aidan (although the answer to the maybe part is broadcast pretty loudly in the first chapter, which makes one of these characters look like a moron). Dina is intelligent, sparkly happy, and super powerful. She is also kidnapped through most of the first part of the book, thus bringing Elise and Aidan together again to search for her. So the question is, is Dina a plot moppet or a toddler MarySue? Having all of the reasons that Elise and Aidan broke up 5 years prior solved with the addition of Dina to the mix doesn't work for me, but given the number of Harlequin titles that work on this precept I imagine that it was a very deliberate characterization on the author's part.
The five-years-ago version of Aidan is described as a workaholic control freak. The present-day version of Aidan is a kind of schmoopy Fae lord with magical powers and a big bank balance. He apparently really regrets letting Elise go 5 years ago, but seriously, a really powerful Fae lord with a ton of money and servants can't find out his ex-girlfriend's phone number and give her a call? Yeah, she moved to Vancouver, it's not like she moved back in time.
Elise, though, is the one who bugged me the most. She's half-Chinese, half-Irish. The Irish part isn't discussed at all, and the Chinese part of her heritage is characterized by her fondness for wearing cherry blossom scented products and a reference to foot binding. Over 4,000 years of Chinese culture whittled down to cherry blossoms and foot binding. She doesn't even call her mother when her daughter is kidnapped or recovered. I mean, really? Really? Once again, there are telephones in Vancouver (which is, I assume, where her parents live. They're not really mentioned at all.) Other than that, she pretty much stands around and gets mad that Aidan tries to protect her.
Bottom line: I feel like there was so much potential in this book, but it was so poorly thought-out that none of it really worked for me. At the end it, my reaction is: needs improvement.
I received a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley.
The good: Carina Press. The copy editing was really well done and the book was available in non-DRM ePub format, which means I could read it on my iPod or on my laptop with no problems. Win!
The ok: The plotting. It mostly made sense and was a fairly interesting storyline, although I do hope that at some point the author explains why the villain wants to take over Detroit. There was brief mention of other places in the world, but mostly my response was... Why Detroit? Why not Raleigh or Beijing or someplace else? I'm willing to roll with it, but I need to understand the strategic importance of Detroit in this world.
The bad: The world-building.
Very loosely sketched out. I never really got a feel for the cultures of the different races or any of the locations. It was like the author took a bunch of fantasy tropes, threw them in a blender, and came out with a mess. It might work for category romance, where the focus is more on the character development, but as an attempt at urban fantasy it was pretty much a fail.
The really bad: The characters. I won't go into the secondary characters, since even the primaries were so poorly sketched out as to be stick figures.
Dina, the daughter of Elise and the maybe-daughter of Aidan (although the answer to the maybe part is broadcast pretty loudly in the first chapter, which makes one of these characters look like a moron). Dina is intelligent, sparkly happy, and super powerful. She is also kidnapped through most of the first part of the book, thus bringing Elise and Aidan together again to search for her. So the question is, is Dina a plot moppet or a toddler MarySue? Having all of the reasons that Elise and Aidan broke up 5 years prior solved with the addition of Dina to the mix doesn't work for me, but given the number of Harlequin titles that work on this precept I imagine that it was a very deliberate characterization on the author's part.
The five-years-ago version of Aidan is described as a workaholic control freak. The present-day version of Aidan is a kind of schmoopy Fae lord with magical powers and a big bank balance. He apparently really regrets letting Elise go 5 years ago, but seriously, a really powerful Fae lord with a ton of money and servants can't find out his ex-girlfriend's phone number and give her a call? Yeah, she moved to Vancouver, it's not like she moved back in time.
Elise, though, is the one who bugged me the most. She's half-Chinese, half-Irish. The Irish part isn't discussed at all, and the Chinese part of her heritage is characterized by her fondness for wearing cherry blossom scented products and a reference to foot binding. Over 4,000 years of Chinese culture whittled down to cherry blossoms and foot binding. She doesn't even call her mother when her daughter is kidnapped or recovered. I mean, really? Really? Once again, there are telephones in Vancouver (which is, I assume, where her parents live. They're not really mentioned at all.) Other than that, she pretty much stands around and gets mad that Aidan tries to protect her.
Bottom line: I feel like there was so much potential in this book, but it was so poorly thought-out that none of it really worked for me. At the end it, my reaction is: needs improvement.
I received a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley.