Marissa has a new wonderful life. She’s Grimm’s partner,
fully involved in running the agency with all its wonders and petty annoyances.
Her best friend Arianna has put her princess past behind her and is settling in
as an agent. And her boyfriend Liam is still with her and it’s wonderful –barring
some singeing from the half-dragon
But she made enemies – and those enemies have a lot of
resources and a lot of patience. When they come for her Marissa finds herself
alone, her friends endangered, absent or depowered and her juggling saving them
and keeping the agency going
Also, she kind of started the apocalypse…
This book is exponentially more silly than the first one.
And it works
It works in a way it wouldn’t with the first book because
Marissa is now Grimm’s partner, not his indentured servant. By putting her in
charge, by making her an equal, the book has more scope to be fun and silly
than dark and gritty and angsty. There were certainly elements of the silly in
the first book, but the darker undertones pulled us away from it and stopped it
going too far
The darkness has been dispersed, Marissa has moved on
from her previous wishes, her laments of the life she is forced into and her
general moping. She now has a career she’s embraced, power and agency, a man
she loves and some very good friends. She even has a new intern to shoot. She’s
happy. She’s in a good place and it really changes the entire tone of the
series
So we have gnomish monster-truck death cults! We have infernal energy manifesting as plagues of murderous poodles! We have princesses blessed with so many positive attributes so there has to be balance – and they cannot drive. We have a love sick wraith of pure hatred dancing attendance on Arianna. We have a prince and true love’s kiss bearer with a phobia of physical contact. We have a zany apocalypse complete with plagues of encyclopaedia salesmen, we have the need to kill golden-egg-laying geese before they destroy the market and a weekly gig of turning frogs back into princes (finding which are which because princes are far lazier and more entitled than frogs) and dwarves digging up balrogs (“nothing says ‘you shall not pass’ like a howitzer.”)
It’s fun, it’s hilarious and it works. Sometimes you just need a book that’s fun.
We have Marissa being awesome and competent and long
suffering and holding everything together as the new co-head of the agency.
Liam, her new dragon boyfriend, has been shipped out of the book for most of it
which is good – because we can focus on Marissa and Arianna. Arianna may be my
favourite character - she has grown leaps and bounds, she’s a powerful magical
princess, has a great big gun and really really hates the fact she’s a princess
despite the magical bonuses she gets. While both she and Marissa are
contemptuous of normal princess behaviour (“flail helplessly and wait for a man”)
it’s also wonderfully clear that Queens and princesses are the real powers in
this world. Marissa’s contempt for princesses isn’t carried over into reality
and we see Marissa’s envy shining through.
If it can be said to be anyone’s book than Marissa’s, it’s
Arianna’s as well
Now the problem. This book suffers from a lack of focus
and a huge twist in the storyline half way through which I felt was jarring and
resulted in neither storyline being developed as much as it could be
For the first half of the book the focus is on Queen
Mihail and her desire for vengeance on Marissa and all her friends and contacts
after the events of book one. This is a fun, dramatic storyline because Marissa
did promise vengeance, is an extremely powerful being and has the resources to
make it stick. We see Marissa reeling from multiple attacks but also having to
handle more and more things on her own as her support network grumbles. It was
an excellent chance for Marissa to shine without Grimm’s power and knowledge
and even without Arianna’s magic or Liam’s new dragon nature. It allowed
Marissa to remind us of her competence (even if there are meta-plot hints of
her being manipulated) and her capabilities despite being the only non-magical
human in the cast. She’s still powerful, she still leads the story, she’s still
pretty awesome and this bit of the book shows her off and the world to an
excellent degree
Then half way through Marissa accidentally becomes the
harbinger of the apocalypse (which could be a fun little mistake to make, but
the whole rules around it and how she is duped are implausible to say the least
– yes I know it’s a book all about the implausible but this pushes it further
than I can run with). Now we have another major storyline and it all kind of
mooshes together clumsily. Despite putting all this effort into squishing Marissa,
Queen Mihail seems to take a break while Marissa runs around trying to save her
friends from their various predicaments. The brewing apocalypse requires
nothing more than a few, brief, delaying moves from Marissa which are definitely
funny (she has to provide mounts for the 4 horsemen. But her contract doesn’t
specify what constitutes a mount) but it generally feels like Marissa is just
putting off the apocalypse. An apocalypse, I feel, generally demands more of
one’s attention.
On top of that we throw in Ari’s relationship issues and
lots of meta-angst with the secrets Grimm is keeping from Marissa and the
future looming of the Black Queen. Together I think it ruins a lot of potential
in the book – because we have so much going on and so much of it conveniently
puts itself on hold while Marissa deals with one of the other storylines or
some of the random mundane elements
I’m also not 100% behind the depiction of the new piper.
Most of her is fun and the mockery of her infected and silly piercings would
work – except Marissa doesn’t quite make it clear that she’s mocking her for
her unwise choices of unmaintained piercings (hence the infection) and not for
being pierced at all. There’s also the plague of blood – causing every woman in
the city to start their periods which contains all kinds of problematic
elements (though the suggestion of agony and pain is more related to cramping
than bad tempers) Similarly when the obese Famine shows up, Marissa is outraged
that Famine is using this form to, in her eyes, mock the starving but doesn’t
quite draw the line between that and being outraged that he’s fat. Also, War –
when war appears as an old White guy she considers it appropriate given the
most destructive and widescale walls in the world have been started by old
white men, but it doesn’t change that War’s most common form is a Black or
Latino man.
Death is the other POC horseman, he’s Asian and probably
the best of them – he’s less of a caricature and much deeper in his role than
just “I’m Pestilence, I cause plague”. He’s infinitely patient, because he’s
inevitable.
The other POC in the story are Rosa, who is around a lot
but really she’s just a ball of bad attitude with a shotgun (and occasionally a
rake). Which is fun, but not a character. And Shigeru the Japanese assassin who
very briefly appears. It’s relatively decent number of characters but very low
in actual content or involvement.
In the end, the plot doesn’t quite hold up – just a
little confused and conflicted and lost. It’s mainly an issue of not living up
to its potential or developing its ideas more than anything but it does fall
short. But I’m honestly inclined to let that go because the book was so much
fun – it’s an excellent book for a grumpy day and it’s a hard book to finish
without smiling. I got this book and the previous one on a whim and I think I
got lucky and I look forward to the next book in the series
