Seanan McGuire did an AMA a few months back and one of the questions involved recommendations for under-read authors. Her response was that Lilith Saintcrow was always worth the time. And I seem to have, naturally, picked up the exact Lilith Saintcrow book that wasn’t going to be a good match for me. I feel kind of bad not rating this higher but I just had a much better time with the other books I rated as a 3 so far this year so it would have felt unfair to give this a 3 as well. So 2.5 rounded down.
Having said that, the bones are absolutely here – if you like Toby Daye or Kate Daniels, you know that those first books weren’t exactly illustrative of how good the series would become, and Kaia does share some of their characteristics – she feels like an outsider to her people and has chosen a bit of a loner path, she is honorable but prickly as hell and not exactly super likable here (she’s very rude to her companions), and she ends up going from loner to having an assortment of followers by the end, in classic found family style.
The novel wasn’t holding my focus at first but that might have been on me; I finally hit the point where it was engaging me. That part is very much more about people than plot – after years apart from her people (who rely on some type of “twin” relationship between men and women – think twin as in soulmate, not sibling), Kaia ends up interacting with someone who believes she is his twin. And she is in complete and utter denial about it, going on and on about how he is wrong and it will break when she leaves him etc. it’s all just a little too drawn out and repetitive but overall, it was fine.
I also liked the other characters introduced. The problem, for me at least, is that this is the major driving point for the first two thirds of the novel and then suddenly we get to the last third and a whole new plot is introduced. It made for a very weirdly structured novel – like these two plot lines maybe should have been happening more in concurrence?
Someone else’s review said that they felt like they were reading two novellas that had been forced together into one book and honestly, I have no idea if that is the case, but it really was a perfect way of describing the book and the structure. If the novel had only been the first part of the story, it would have been a bit slight but I would have still given it 3 stars. It’s the way these two things were put together as one book that made no sense and left me frustrated about pacing and story.
So … there are 2 sequels but not sure if I want to continue this series. I know I compared it to Kate Daniels and Toby Daye and if this was a series with ten more novels, I probably would be willing to give it a few more chances and see how the character develops but with only two more? Not sure it’ll quite get there.
Still definitely open to this author if someone else has a better suggestion for a starting point! On the other hand, maybe I need to give up – as much as I love everything Seanan McGuire writes, I also struggled to get into (and DNF’ed) something else she recommended. I just don’t get how I can like what someone writes so much and yet not align with their reading taste.