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A review by ceridwenanne
Final Night by Kell Shaw
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I think this is my first full-on StoryGraph rec I've read, one that didn't come recommended by someone else too. They did a decent job of it! The setup isn't that dissimilar to the White Trash Zombie books: a woman wakes up undead and has to solve her own murder. The world is decidedly different though.
It's an alternate present (or 2003) where the world is like it is, except that there was a Dark Lord 2k years ago who got vanquished, and then all the magic went out of the world. There's still orks and ogres and such, and the usual magical racism thrown at biracial people -- in the fantasy races sense of the term. (I'm not super pumped by magical racism, because it feels like talking about fake racism so you can avoid talking about the real thing.)
Anyway, girl was killed 20 years previous, in the 1980s, so coming back to her hometown, the place where her life was cut short before it really began, is mostly a series of emotional body blows. Her house is gone, replaced by a hotel; her dad started drinking and moved away; a couple of her band mates are huge sweaty assholes. It's not all bad: one band mate has come out as trans and is therefore much more fulfilled and together.
Much of the third act takes place in an underworld where the rules seem somehow both over-determined and capricious. And the Big Bad felt a little easy to me, the kind of villain whose motives are boring and obvious.
But that's ok! I've been crashing on the rocks of urban fantasy recently, completely tired of heroines who are Not Like Other Girls and growly assholes as love interests. The girl here has a serious reckoning with how she treated her friends and girlfriend back in the day, and I love when people we're supposed to like actually work on being worthy people. Good job all around.
It's an alternate present (or 2003) where the world is like it is, except that there was a Dark Lord 2k years ago who got vanquished, and then all the magic went out of the world. There's still orks and ogres and such, and the usual magical racism thrown at biracial people -- in the fantasy races sense of the term. (I'm not super pumped by magical racism, because it feels like talking about fake racism so you can avoid talking about the real thing.)
Anyway, girl was killed 20 years previous, in the 1980s, so coming back to her hometown, the place where her life was cut short before it really began, is mostly a series of emotional body blows. Her house is gone, replaced by a hotel; her dad started drinking and moved away; a couple of her band mates are huge sweaty assholes. It's not all bad: one band mate has come out as trans and is therefore much more fulfilled and together.
Much of the third act takes place in an underworld where the rules seem somehow both over-determined and capricious. And the Big Bad felt a little easy to me, the kind of villain whose motives are boring and obvious.
But that's ok! I've been crashing on the rocks of urban fantasy recently, completely tired of heroines who are Not Like Other Girls and growly assholes as love interests. The girl here has a serious reckoning with how she treated her friends and girlfriend back in the day, and I love when people we're supposed to like actually work on being worthy people. Good job all around.