When Jane Yellowrock visited Nell, she left her in chaos.
While the vampires Jane was looking for were saved, Nell was left as an
outsider among her cult; one who not only had the temerity to be a woman living
alone, but one who helped an outsider against her
She knows it’s only a matter of time before the churchmen
burn her out and even her strange and disturbing powers connecting her to the
Soulwood won’t be enough
Until Ricky LaFleur arrives, special Agent from PSYled,
the supernatural investigation agency. He wants her help – and with that brings
the offer of money and possible safety. Or is it just going to rile the church
even more against her?
This book is set in the Jane Yellowrock world and takes one of the side characters in that
series and clearly lays the foundation of a new series within that world
setting
And this, as the first book in this series, does an excellent job of this. We already have a lot of the world building from the larger Jane Yellowrock series and is careful to only bring up those elements that are relevant to Nell’s story and the story as it stands now. It also really helps the greater world setting by bringing in characters, creatures and concepts that just don’t fit with Jane’s story. I like this idea because when you have a really big, rich world setting it can be really tempted to ram it all into one story and it wouldn’t work
Nell also brings in such a different viewpoint from Jane
– she’s so very different from Jane that it makes for excellent potential to
see whole new sides to this world (and Jane’s habit of approaching problems as
things to shoot and stab things). This also allows more supernatural creatures
to be introduced (like the gwyllgi which is definitely some interesting and
obscure mythological research) as well as Nell’s unique abilities without
crowding Jane’s life with more weirdness.
Nell herself and her nature is a fascinating concept –
her connection to nature, her terrible power, her very conflict over what she
can do and what she is an excellent characterisation. It also worked well with
her character. As someone who grew up in a highly religious and oppressive
cult, but someone who has escaped them – she has very conflicting elements to
her character. She rejects her past and often hates how her past has shaped
her, rejecting elements of herself which reveal she’s a “churchwoman”. At the
same time she has been shaped by her past – her opinions, her experiences, her
lack of education are all directly shaped by that church past. On top of this
she has lived in such an isolated state that she is often shocked when she sees
more of society outside of her very isolated circumstances. Her constant
surprise by simple things like men making coffee and doing “women’s work” does
far more to emphasise how utterly misogynist her upbringing was than any amount
of rants or condemnation
At the same time I love to see how she breaks the
stereotypes. She speaks up, she fights against people telling her what to do.
She guards her space fiercely and she’s intelligent. This particularly is
really good, because just because she’s uneducated doesn’t make her stupid, nor
does it make her incapable of logical deduction – which is really well displayed.
Not just her intelligence, but the classist prejudice of those around her who
are shocked by the fact she can’t
On a closer level, the world building also nicely
reflects this complication. It would be easy to point to Nell’s former cult and
declare it evil – especially since it’s certainly led by some very evil gross
misogynists. It would be easy to just have them all universally demonised, or
even to have a good faction and a bad faction. But we don’t. The good faction
are certainly not flawless and sexism still deeply covers them, some heroes
from Nell’s past are far from heroic as we learn more about them. The women of
the church are not all silent and weak – they face a lot of vicious oppression
and hate and vile misogyny but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable fighting
their own corner, or are meek or ignorant. Oppressed even being victims doesn’t
remove their capacity or their will.
Alas, the bad side is we bring back Ricky LaFleur, the
character I have repeatedly not liked in the greater Jane Yellowrock series so I wasn’t exactly happy to see him back.
But the team he has built – including 3 women and 2 Black women. There is an
interesting juxtaposition of Paka – a wereleopard, more than a little
animalistic and definitely potentially problematic. But we also have Jojo who
is the only member of the team without supernatural power and is the computer
expert of the group. In other words, while Paka can reflect some dubious tropes
Black people face, but Jojo subverts those tropes.
The only members of the team who are especially prominent
is a white male wereleopard (and likely Nell’s love interest) and a white male
empath. I do think everyone else will be much more involved in the future books
in this series as this is a clear introductory book to the overall unit. There
are no LGBTQ people.
I really like how they discuss Tegan’s empathy and how
the group as a whole has to take steps around it, even considering the
implications of empaths being easily manipulated – because they feel your
desire or don’t want you to feel bad. It’s a nice expansion and exploration of
empathy
With all this we have a nice, focused story that is
perfect for a new series – it has a definite end, a definite introduction to
the characters while still have an actual plot and not just being a vehicle. I
liked the twists, I liked the factions – I liked the idea that it’s not just as
simplistic as it first appeared. It’s a promising amount of nuance with an
interesting and quite unique main character in an already fascinating and broad
world.
