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Genre: Urban fantasy
Main characters: Jasmine “Jazz” Tremaine, Nikolai Gregorivich / Nick Gregory
Time and place: 2007, California
First sentence: “Someone’s thoughtless use of magick has put our school in great jeopardy.”
Summary: Jasmine Tremaine is a witch, working as a “curse remover” by day and limo driver by night. She is happy with her existence that includes a pair of carnivorous bunny slippers, a roommate who designs dating sites for vampires, and a glorious car inhabited by a ghost from the 50s.
All this until one night her ex boyfriend, Nick, who also happens to be a vampire, came to her needing her help with a case, seemingly not caring a bit about the thirty years that have passed since they last saw each other.
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This is my latest foray in the Urban Fantasy genre and probably my last for quite a while, as I have decided (after this and Yasmine Galenorn’s Witchling) that it is most definitely not my cup of tea. I simply can summon no sympathy for the kind of heroines this genre seemingly has to offer: the slang-talking-trying-too-hard-to-be-cool-and-failing type.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a spunky heroine just as much as anyone else, but Jazz seemed to me in a desperate need of an anger management course more than anything else. All she ever does is snarl at people, left and right (sometimes with good reason to, sometimes not), acting like a spoiled brat most of the time. Nope, I so did not like her. As for Nick, he is rather ok (in an “he didn’t annoy me as much” kind of way), but most of what he does has to do with Jazz (he’s either with her or daydreaming about her), so we didn’t actually get to know him that well. As for the villain of the piece, it is a clear case where “show, don’t tell” should have been applied, as he only has about two or three scenes in the whole book (but we spend the rest of the time reading about how much of a badass he is and how Jazz is afraid of him — definitely too much “tell”).
The relationship between the two main characters has also bothered me. They met about 300 years ago and had great chemistry between the sheets, but they do not want to admit there can be something serious between them as witches and vampires usually don’t mix. That would be fine with me, except with one small issue: over the years, Nick always finds ways to make Jazz end up in jail. According to him he only does this to protect her from greater forces, but (and here I agree with Jazz) she is always annoyed with him because of that. However, a bit surprisingly, their latest rift is not because of Jazz having to face yet another stint in jail, but it all comes down to Jazz being really disappointed by the fact the vampire has not come to her help one day when she really needed it (his reason for that is not explained, leaving me as a reader imagine that a) he probably had no idea Jazz was in danger and b) I don’t exactly get the fact that after thirty years she still holds a grudge for a thing he had no way of preventing).
I would have liked it a lot better if the magic system in the book had been a bit more defined, or structured. Or if it had been at least explained, some lines drawn, and so on. As things are, Jazz can do practically anything, as there are no actual limitations to her strength (other than those needed by the narrative at one moment or another). Meh. It is not even clear whether incantations are needed in order for the magick to work or not, since Jazz only uses them about half the time (plus the words are rather creatively changed, “Because I say so, damn it” being the ending formula of choice, yet another token of Jazz’s charming personality).
At least the book has a really cute cover :) (although it does depict a black cat, where there was none in the book, and also Irma is mentioned on the back cover as Norma, hehe)
Thoughts on the title: Meh. It’s actually the title of the book Jazz has once borrowed from the Library. I can’t exactly put my finger on what it made me expect from this book but whatever my hopes were they ended up dashed.
Thoughts on the ending: A fair candidate to the most “What???” ending ever. Which is to say I hated its guts.
show spoiler
So, we are at the point where Jazz and Nick are planning an entrance to their enemy’s lair, a place that they are not sure they’s ever leave. So what does Jazz decide? “Oooooh, let’s take Irma with us too!”. The very same Irma that didn’t get to go anywhere previously, suddenly is allowed to tag along. In Jazz’s head, no less, where she spends time with clever lines like “What is that?”, “Oh, what foul smell”, and the likes.
After the two/three of them were trapped and taken into Clive’s dungeon, Jazz is presumably kept away from her source of magick. Until, of course, she manages (how? why?) to find a tiny speck of power deep down inside. She uses it to destroy some tapestry, annoying Clive, yadda yadda yadda. And that’s where it all gets meh (or more meh than before): Jazz, who is way less powerful than Clive, calls out to a deus ex machina (in this case, a Goddess of Judgement? How come if such a goddess existed it has waited up until Jazz’s call to her to intervene?). Her request granted Jazz is now filled with power, and conjures a lightning bolt that splits the floor in half — why? Because she cannot actually attack Clive? How come?
Since there was sort of a prophecy that stated Clive could only be destroyed by a “shadow” (aka ghost)(a thing that still doesn’t explain why Jazz couldn’t have struck him down earlier, to at least disable him if he couldn’t be killed), guess what Jazz does next: she gets Irma out of her head. Irma, a peaceful old lady, that somehow manages to single-handedly take Clive down. How?? Nobody knows, it only happened (to think that Clive was so incredibly powerful and so well versed in black magick, and it only took a very peaceful ghost to do him in). Afterwards, the shadows present outside (the spirits of Clive’s previous victims, who were previously forbidden to enter the premises) were allowed inside (by whom??? Has the Goddess destroyed the wards?) and they killed Clive for good yadda yadda yadda.
And to think that Nick had no contribution at all to the ending. That’s somewhat disappointing too, as it would have been a lot nicer if Clive’s defeat would have been a team effort (Jazz and Nick’s) instead of the result of a bunch of ghosts barging in.
What I liked most: I was amused by the reason Jasmine (once Griet) ended up in this day and age: sometime in the 14th century she, along with other witches, was punished for some transgression to spend one hundred years in the world. One hundred years who turned out to be more like seven hundred, because Jazz’s punishment kept being extended due some other transgressions she kept adding to the list. :)
What I liked least: The use of the words “magick” and “magickal” and so on has annoyed me to no end while reading. Why do some people think that if they take a normal word and change its spelling it suddenly becomes much cooler?
Also, Stasia Romanov? Really?
Recommend it to? Lovers of urban fantasy. I for one have not enjoyed this book at all, but it has lots of fans plus lots of sequels, so I imagine that those who enjoy the genre will probably find this one interesting too.
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