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A review by reanne
City of Wolves by Willow Palecek
2.0
Review crossposted from Reanne Reads.
This novella (or possibly novelette; it’s only about 100 pages) has an interesting premise. It’s set in what I would guess is some sort of alternate 19th century England. Except no one says England and no English cities are named that I could tell, so it’s a really alternate history. It’s a mystery with a private detective who gets hired to solve the death of a nobleman. And it’s a fantasy, with at least magic and werewolves and probably other stuff not shown in the story itself.
It starts off pretty interesting. Took me a little while to get a grip on the setting, since I didn’t know this was an alternate history sort of thing going in. The main character is a pretty standard private detective sort, and it does work for this story. He has his own morals, he doesn’t back down from them, he’s cool and collected in a crisis—all that sort of standard P.I. stuff we see in detective stories. Most of the other characters are familiar as well.
I enjoyed this story pretty well for a while. It wasn’t outstanding, but as an alternate 19th century England fantasy murder mystery, it was a nice different sort of thing. There’s even an exciting stagecoach chase scene involving a werewolf.
But then it introduced an incredibly cliché evil, corrupt church official. There are actually many clichés in this book, but that is one that particularly grates on me. In keeping with the alternate part of this setting, the religion in this story is not actually called Christianity or Catholicism (it’s not named at all, in fact); there are only references to “the Light” and “the Dark”, which is about as generic as generic religion gets. Except in reference to this corrupt official and his church, they use words like “vicar” and “cathedral”, which are clearly words relating to Catholicism/Christianity. The author does not use words from Islam or Buddhism or other religions, nor does she make up new words entirely, but uses words clearly referencing certain branches of Christianity. Which makes this a corrupt, evil priest. Totally cliché and also offensive. The worst part, though, is how this character doesn’t even have any real part in this story but is apparently only there to set up his role in a potential sequel.
The ending of the story is, again, a bit predictable, but there were some werewolf-related twists I didn’t quite expect.
This would have been a perfectly serviceable read, though not outstanding, had it not annoyed me with the “BWAHAHAHA!” evil priest whose appearance only made me more aware of the other clichés the story was employing.
Overall, a disappointing story. Had it been more original in its character choices, it could have been a lot more enjoyable than it was.
This novella (or possibly novelette; it’s only about 100 pages) has an interesting premise. It’s set in what I would guess is some sort of alternate 19th century England. Except no one says England and no English cities are named that I could tell, so it’s a really alternate history. It’s a mystery with a private detective who gets hired to solve the death of a nobleman. And it’s a fantasy, with at least magic and werewolves and probably other stuff not shown in the story itself.
It starts off pretty interesting. Took me a little while to get a grip on the setting, since I didn’t know this was an alternate history sort of thing going in. The main character is a pretty standard private detective sort, and it does work for this story. He has his own morals, he doesn’t back down from them, he’s cool and collected in a crisis—all that sort of standard P.I. stuff we see in detective stories. Most of the other characters are familiar as well.
I enjoyed this story pretty well for a while. It wasn’t outstanding, but as an alternate 19th century England fantasy murder mystery, it was a nice different sort of thing. There’s even an exciting stagecoach chase scene involving a werewolf.
But then it introduced an incredibly cliché evil, corrupt church official. There are actually many clichés in this book, but that is one that particularly grates on me. In keeping with the alternate part of this setting, the religion in this story is not actually called Christianity or Catholicism (it’s not named at all, in fact); there are only references to “the Light” and “the Dark”, which is about as generic as generic religion gets. Except in reference to this corrupt official and his church, they use words like “vicar” and “cathedral”, which are clearly words relating to Catholicism/Christianity. The author does not use words from Islam or Buddhism or other religions, nor does she make up new words entirely, but uses words clearly referencing certain branches of Christianity. Which makes this a corrupt, evil priest. Totally cliché and also offensive. The worst part, though, is how this character doesn’t even have any real part in this story but is apparently only there to set up his role in a potential sequel.
The ending of the story is, again, a bit predictable, but there were some werewolf-related twists I didn’t quite expect.
This would have been a perfectly serviceable read, though not outstanding, had it not annoyed me with the “BWAHAHAHA!” evil priest whose appearance only made me more aware of the other clichés the story was employing.
Overall, a disappointing story. Had it been more original in its character choices, it could have been a lot more enjoyable than it was.