Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Enchantment Emporium - by Tanya Huff

Alysha "Allie" Gale is in between jobs (i.e. unemployed) when she receives a package from her grandmother in the mail.  The letter enclosed with the package informs Allie that, if she is receiving the package, that means her grandmother is dead.  The package contains Allie's grandmother's last will and testament, and it informs Allie that she has inherited her grandmother's store, The Enchantment Emporium, in Calgary.

Less interested in running her grandmother's store than finding out what has happened to her, Allie heads out to Calgary to discover that her grandmother was not only servicing the local Fey community, but that a sorcerer is also practicing Dark Magic in the area (something Allie's Aunties would typically "deal with") and the city is beginning to have a rather daunting dragon infestation.

There's a lot more to the novel than that, but trying to write a synopsis of it for such a short and informal review as the ones found on this blog would only give me a headache.

I bought The Enchantment Emporium because, based on the publisher's synopsis on the back cover, it sounded like it would be another light hearted magical adventure in the style of the author's Keeper Chronicles trilogy.  That did not turn out to be the case.

While The Enchantment Emporium does have its moments of whimsy, and Allie Gale and the store she takes over have more than a little bit in common with Keeper Claire Hanson and the Elysian Fields Guest House, the two are almost as different as night and day.  Emporium's tone is far less playful and much more adult, especially in regards to just how "close" the Gale family can be, when it comes to breeding and keeping their magical power "in the family".  Yuck.  

Many of the characters also have darker shadings, almost malevolently so, than those found in most of the Keeper Chronicles stories.  That was the biggest tonal switch I (foolishly) was not expecting and it that took me quite a while to warm up to them, but I did.  Despite those dark shadings and, at first, confusing magical world they inhabit (Huff introduces Allie during the family's May Day ceremony, where the magical and the real are blended together in an almost surreal fashion) the characters grew on me.  I think the introduction of a changeling leprechaun named Joe is what helped win me over.  

After finishing the book, and looking back at his equal parts scared-out-of-his-wits and hopelessly baffled antics, I think that Joe serves as a wonderful reader substitute (because he is every bit as confused and intimidated as many a cold reader will no doubt be) so there is someone to relate to while Huff not only parses out the workings and rules of her character's magical world, but also layers in the foreshadowing, and drops the hints and clues of the apocalyptic battle to come.  It was nice to have someone in the book that was as confused and overwhelmed as I felt during the first one hundred or so pages.

Once all the characters were properly aligned and the plot began picking up speed, I was swept up and away.  By the novel's end I was sorry to have to say good-bye to the extended Gale family.  The Enchantment Emporium reads like a stand alone novel,  but the Gale family is so big and their magical system so interlinked that, I am sure, there will be another Gale family story in the future.  I look forward to reading it.

Long Hot Summoning (The Keeper Chronicles #3) - by Tanya Huff

The third and, to date, final book in The Keeper Chronicles series starts with Diana, Claire's younger and more powerful sister, graduating from High School.  Immediately thereafter she becomes a Keeper and receives her first summons; to a shopping mall where someone (something, actually) has created a segue that will allow all manner of nastiness to creep over from the Otherside.

Although she is the most powerful Keeper of them all, Diana is quick to realize that she will need help closing down the segue and enlists the aide of Claire to do so.  But doing so is a lot more complicated than it seems, at first, and Diana and Claire have to overcome various obstacles - most of them silly, some of them spooky - before they can shut down the segue.

Tanya Huff's Summon the Keeper remains one of my favorite contemporary/comedic fantasy novels.  I thought that the second book in the series, appropriately titled The Second Summoning, was a fun read, just not quite as much fun as Summon the Keeper; Long Hot Summoning falls somewhere between the two.  It is more fun than The Second Summoning, but not nearly as much fun as Summon the Keeper.

There are two reasons for this, I think.  The first being that Summon the Keeper had a serial feel to it.  Although there was a primary story, there were also several secondary stories to keep things fresh and interesting, as well as Claire and Dean distracted.  Both The Second Summoning and Long Hot Summoning focus almost entirely on one story arc.  Of the two, The Second Summoning suffered the most, for there were no humorous distractions for Claire and Dean as they struggled with their post-coital relationship issues.  Granted, one would be more than a little performance shy if the power of the, uh, coupling summoned an angel into being.

Huff wisely keeps the obstacles somewhat lighter in Long Hot Summoning.  Dean and Austin are distracted by a life force sucking mummy, while Claire is off assisting Diana and Sam in saving the world from the segue; something that brings me to the second reason why both follow-up novels lack the comedic zest of the first book.

Claire, Dean, and Austin are no longer the primary characters in the series.  Diana and Sam (Diana's cat companion) are.  Sad to say, but the latter are nowhere near as interesting as the former; although Sam does have his moments, because he is a cat.

Perhaps it is my being a parent of a teenager, but I just found Diana far too irritating, irresponsible, and immature to really care all that much about.  I just wanted her to grow up and take her responsibilities as Keeper seriously.  Even worse is her budding romance with a teen turned Elf named Kris.  It is a romance without heart, for Diana and Kris do no have much chemistry.

Saving the book are its supporting characters: Claire, Dean, and Austin, as well as the above mentioned soul sucking mummy and her enslaved lover.  Then there is this Steve Irwin style archaeologist desperate to come to the enslaved lover's rescue, and a teenaged King Arthur archetype.  I could have read about them for another hundred pages, just as long as Diana was moved into the background, where she belongs.

The Second Summoning: The Keeper's Chronicles #2 - by Tanya Huff

Having closed the portal to Hell in the basement of the Elysian Fields Guest House, Claire Hansen, her talking cat Austin, and Dean McIssac are now free to follow Claire's summons to other rifts that are in need of closing.  Well, sort of.  Claire and Dean have yet to consummate their romantic relationship and that is distracting Claire to no end.  She is also none too comfortable with the whole Keeper/Bystander romance thing.  Fearing that she will only put Dean at risk, she sends him away.  Things get worse for Claire, however, because she cannot stop thinking about Dean!  She calls him back, literally, and the two waste no time burning off their pent up sexual energy.

Unfortunately the afterglow, thanks in large part to some tampering with the possibilities by Claire's teen aged sister Diana, leads to an unneeded manifestation of the Light that, thanks to a misunderstanding with a young lady's irate father, becomes trapped on Earth as a very real teen aged boy.

Making matters worse is the powers of Darkness.  Sensing an imbalance, a demon is sent to manifest as a human being to counteract the angel's bodily manifestation.  Good and evil being as different as night and day, the demon is a teen aged girl.

Oh, the possibilities...

As much as I adored reading Summon the Keeper, I dreaded cracking open The Second Summoning.  It was not that I expected the second book to be bad, it was more that I feared it would not be as good, or simply as much fun to read, as the first one.  I have been burned by enough shoddy sequels to expect diminished returns whenever a writer or filmmaker offers a second helping of something I enjoyed the first time around; and I loved both the characters in Summon the Keeper and the world they inhabited enough to simply content myself with revisiting them in that particular story, and just leave the question of "What happened next?" unanswered.

Well, I changed my mind and decided to finally have author Tanya Huff answer the "What next?" question.  I am happy to report that what does happen next is, at times, just as much laugh out loud fun as it was the first time around, and when it is not quite as much laugh out loud fun as the first time, it is still fun in that comfy and cozy "slipping on my favorite sweater" kind of way.  It was a fun read that, when it ended, left me eager to find out what happens in what looks to be the final book in the series, Long Hot Summoning.  (Say it isn't so!)