Willow and Paloma are sisters, doing their own thing,
tearing up and down the country. They’re Shadow Warriors, nearly indestructible
warriors bringing down demons and monsters, rescuing princesses and blowing up
giant turd monsters – whatever that was.
After taking a job hunting down rogue vampires, things
rapidly get very very complicated when there seems to be far more involved –
including a captured elven princesses, some rogue werewolves and Witches who
drop farmhouses on them; which is just annoying.
Of course, as if a veritable army of monsters to kill
weren’t enough, there’s a far more complicated matter to deal with: hot guys,
relationships and sex. Definitely more complicated than marauding vampires and
demons.
This book is immense, awesome fun in a completely guilty
pleasure fashion. The protagonists, Willow and Paloma are incredible fun. They
don’t care what other people think of them, they enjoy themselves immensely,
they love their family, they love each other and they’re frequently hilariously
funny.
They’re also terribly immature in a way that makes me feel
slightly guilty every time I laugh. Whether it’s willow’s epic burping or the
problem with snakes in the toilet and… well a lot of immature bathroom humour
and silliness.
But it’s still funny. Part of it because there’s a lot of
jokes above and beyond that which hilariously works together but also because
it forms part of the pattern of the sisters. Are they immature? Yes. Are they
childish? Yes. Are they crude and impolite and downright nasty at times? Yes
yes and yes in all counts. And they don’t care. Their crudeness emphasises just
how much they don’t succumb to convention, their refusal to be policed and
their simple joy in their life no matter how much it should be disapproved of.
They have no shame, and I kind of love them for it.
And did I mention they’re funny? Because they’re really really really funny.
Of course it also fits with the gloriously fun and rather
cartoony action of the book. As Shadow Warriors, the sisters are nearly
invulnerable – at very least they’re very very very hard to kill indeed. So the
fight scenes? They can be fun and corny – and have Willow maintaining a running
commentary (like “I’m being throttled!”
and “I’m airborne!” whenever a
monster throws her). And them never needing a plan or research because they’re
just that awesome. Or having manoeuvers with 80s songs codewords. It also means
we can completely avoid those awful, horrendous tropes of “oh delicate female
flower, stand behind me and the big strong manly men.” Sure their family worries about them – they
have extremely strong family bonds and care about their siblings – but they’re
not considered people who need protecting or sheltering. They’re warriors –
fun, zany, unpredictable, incredibly violent warriors. And while they joke and
play around a lot, they also do care about the people who could suffer at
supernatural hands, something they make clear subtly in repeated ways. Also one
of them collects Care bears – it seems silly but there’s a lot of depth to even
casual elements of their character – like their names and the soft toys they
collect.
