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A review by oneoflifeslollopers
Royal Street by Suzanne Johnson
2.0
A secluded Louisiana bayou. A sexy pirate. Seduction and deceit. My Friday afternoon had the makings of a great romantic adventure, at least in theory.
In practice, angry mosquitoes were using me for target practice, humidity had ruined any prayer of a good hair day, and the pirate in question – the infamous Jean Lafitte – was two hundred years old, armed, and carrying a six-pack of Paradise condoms in assorted fruit flavours.
Royal Street is set during the days leading up to, and the aftermath, of Hurricane Katrina when not only did the levees break, but the barriers keeping the paranormal element from the human world is broken.
A borrower at work first brought this to my attention and I was intrigued by the blurb on the back cover. I thought it was a really interesting concept to use a natural disaster as the starting point for a paranormal novel and I really enjoyed reading about the Hurricane Katrina and the effect it has had on New Orleans. You can feel throughout the whole novel how much Johnson loves her city and truly begin to understand the utter devastation felt by those that lost their home and their town. I found the day to day details of the recovery process fascinating and I thought the little snippets from newspaper articles included at the beginning of some chapters was a nice touch.
Unfortunately, the execution of the urban fantasy portion of this novel did not work. I’m not entirely sure why Johnson chose to turn this into an urban fantasy; it’s clear her true love is talking about her city and that is not a bad thing. Perhaps, and I’m being very cynical here, the window for publishing a biography about Katrina has closed, and someone somewhere along the lines did the math on how well paranormal romance and urban fantasy sells, I don’t know. What I do know is that while I felt nothing but love for New Orleans, and the suffering people went through, I felt no love at all for the genre and you can’t write well for a genre you don’t love.
DJ is a Green Congress junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans. If you’re not quite sure what that means, don’t ask me because I read the novel and I still don’t know what it means except that she’s got quite an extensive herb garden in her upstairs spare bedroom. Her job is to fix any “breaches” in the barrier between the Now and the Beyond. These breaches might be a pesky pixie, a thirsty vamp or a lonely Louis Armstrong who just wants to play some music. Hurricane Katrina causes more damage than the destruction of almost an entire city though, because it somehow also breaks the invisible barrier between the human world and the one where all the paranormal nasties got banished, and DJs boss and mentor, Gerry, has disappeared.
I found DJ to be a fairly weak character, more supporting role than leading lady material. I was never able to get a good grasp of her character – what are her interests, hobbies, passions, deepest darkest fears? I know she feels abandoned by her family and I know she’s some kind of wizard, but apart from that very little about her is developed. Not only was she a poorly developed character, but also a poorly executed one too. DJ is never in control of the situation or her surroundings, and she barely feels in control of herself and who she is. Even when walking into dangerous situations, I never got the feeling that DJ herself wanted to be there, she was only there because that’s what a main character would do in that situation.
I wanted nothing more than to run out of the cemetery with them, but that wasn’t an option. I was so not cut out to be a hero. A hero wouldn’t shake and feel like throwing up. A hero would whip out a staff or a gun and take charge of the situation. I picked the tallest guy still among the onlookers and wedged in behind him.
The wizarding element of the novel is also poorly developed; there are different colours of wizards but there is very little attempt to explain the difference and absolutely no attempt to explain how wizards came to be and why it is up to them to keep the paranormal element out while they stay in. It would have been nice to get some of the backstory of DJ’s training, in order to gain a better understanding of what it is she does but also to allow some attempt at bonding with her.
The supporting cast didn’t fare much better than DJ – they are also fairly underdeveloped characters, though there was potential to make them more substantial. DJ’s new partner is Alex, an “enforcer” who appears to do the dirty work for the Sentinels and has an impressive collection of weapons. He seemed to me to fill the job of Ranger in the movie version of One for the Money; there to teach DJ all the ways in which she was inept and then to rescue her when she needed help. Alex’s cousin, Jake, has some potential to be an interesting character in future books but I’m glad that DJ didn’t establish a romantic relationship with either character at this stage.
By far the most interesting character for me was the undead pirate Jean Lafitte. He was the one character that had personality and a sense of humour. Though I’m not really sure whyhe kept hopping across into the human world, I certainly hope he keeps on doing it in the rest of the series. However, despite the fact that I knew he was obviously a very famous person in history, I don’t know why, and a little bit of his back story would have been really nice.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s clear that Johnson has a lot of love for New Orleans and a lot to say on how much people suffered during Hurricane Katrina. What is less clear is why she chose urban fantasy as the medium to explore that suffering. Admittedly, I may not have picked up a book exclusively about Hurricane Katrina, but I can’t help but wonder if Johnson’s intentions wouldn’t have been better served in a novel exploring Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of a woman who has lost a family member and must piece her life back together while still trying to search for her loved ones. What she really wanted to say is no more obvious than on the last page, where the paranormal barely even warrants a mention – the emphasis is all surviving Hurricane Katrina.
I wish Katrina had never happened, that the city I love so much hadn’t been so broken, its spirit so damaged, its naïve joy replaced by sorrow and cynicism and anger. Yet I know a lot of things I;ve come to love since the storm would never have been in my life without the pain.
Katrina took, and she gave.
In practice, angry mosquitoes were using me for target practice, humidity had ruined any prayer of a good hair day, and the pirate in question – the infamous Jean Lafitte – was two hundred years old, armed, and carrying a six-pack of Paradise condoms in assorted fruit flavours.
Royal Street is set during the days leading up to, and the aftermath, of Hurricane Katrina when not only did the levees break, but the barriers keeping the paranormal element from the human world is broken.
A borrower at work first brought this to my attention and I was intrigued by the blurb on the back cover. I thought it was a really interesting concept to use a natural disaster as the starting point for a paranormal novel and I really enjoyed reading about the Hurricane Katrina and the effect it has had on New Orleans. You can feel throughout the whole novel how much Johnson loves her city and truly begin to understand the utter devastation felt by those that lost their home and their town. I found the day to day details of the recovery process fascinating and I thought the little snippets from newspaper articles included at the beginning of some chapters was a nice touch.
Unfortunately, the execution of the urban fantasy portion of this novel did not work. I’m not entirely sure why Johnson chose to turn this into an urban fantasy; it’s clear her true love is talking about her city and that is not a bad thing. Perhaps, and I’m being very cynical here, the window for publishing a biography about Katrina has closed, and someone somewhere along the lines did the math on how well paranormal romance and urban fantasy sells, I don’t know. What I do know is that while I felt nothing but love for New Orleans, and the suffering people went through, I felt no love at all for the genre and you can’t write well for a genre you don’t love.
DJ is a Green Congress junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans. If you’re not quite sure what that means, don’t ask me because I read the novel and I still don’t know what it means except that she’s got quite an extensive herb garden in her upstairs spare bedroom. Her job is to fix any “breaches” in the barrier between the Now and the Beyond. These breaches might be a pesky pixie, a thirsty vamp or a lonely Louis Armstrong who just wants to play some music. Hurricane Katrina causes more damage than the destruction of almost an entire city though, because it somehow also breaks the invisible barrier between the human world and the one where all the paranormal nasties got banished, and DJs boss and mentor, Gerry, has disappeared.
I found DJ to be a fairly weak character, more supporting role than leading lady material. I was never able to get a good grasp of her character – what are her interests, hobbies, passions, deepest darkest fears? I know she feels abandoned by her family and I know she’s some kind of wizard, but apart from that very little about her is developed. Not only was she a poorly developed character, but also a poorly executed one too. DJ is never in control of the situation or her surroundings, and she barely feels in control of herself and who she is. Even when walking into dangerous situations, I never got the feeling that DJ herself wanted to be there, she was only there because that’s what a main character would do in that situation.
I wanted nothing more than to run out of the cemetery with them, but that wasn’t an option. I was so not cut out to be a hero. A hero wouldn’t shake and feel like throwing up. A hero would whip out a staff or a gun and take charge of the situation. I picked the tallest guy still among the onlookers and wedged in behind him.
The wizarding element of the novel is also poorly developed; there are different colours of wizards but there is very little attempt to explain the difference and absolutely no attempt to explain how wizards came to be and why it is up to them to keep the paranormal element out while they stay in. It would have been nice to get some of the backstory of DJ’s training, in order to gain a better understanding of what it is she does but also to allow some attempt at bonding with her.
The supporting cast didn’t fare much better than DJ – they are also fairly underdeveloped characters, though there was potential to make them more substantial. DJ’s new partner is Alex, an “enforcer” who appears to do the dirty work for the Sentinels and has an impressive collection of weapons. He seemed to me to fill the job of Ranger in the movie version of One for the Money; there to teach DJ all the ways in which she was inept and then to rescue her when she needed help. Alex’s cousin, Jake, has some potential to be an interesting character in future books but I’m glad that DJ didn’t establish a romantic relationship with either character at this stage.
By far the most interesting character for me was the undead pirate Jean Lafitte. He was the one character that had personality and a sense of humour. Though I’m not really sure whyhe kept hopping across into the human world, I certainly hope he keeps on doing it in the rest of the series. However, despite the fact that I knew he was obviously a very famous person in history, I don’t know why, and a little bit of his back story would have been really nice.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s clear that Johnson has a lot of love for New Orleans and a lot to say on how much people suffered during Hurricane Katrina. What is less clear is why she chose urban fantasy as the medium to explore that suffering. Admittedly, I may not have picked up a book exclusively about Hurricane Katrina, but I can’t help but wonder if Johnson’s intentions wouldn’t have been better served in a novel exploring Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of a woman who has lost a family member and must piece her life back together while still trying to search for her loved ones. What she really wanted to say is no more obvious than on the last page, where the paranormal barely even warrants a mention – the emphasis is all surviving Hurricane Katrina.
I wish Katrina had never happened, that the city I love so much hadn’t been so broken, its spirit so damaged, its naïve joy replaced by sorrow and cynicism and anger. Yet I know a lot of things I;ve come to love since the storm would never have been in my life without the pain.
Katrina took, and she gave.