Unshapely Things

I loved this book. It was a little slow paced in the beginning but that was fine because del Franco set up a complex world mostly by showing rather than telling. It started as an urban fantasy police procedural and it was well done. About halfway through the real action started and I couldn't put it down.

I love the main character. He's complex and I like the idea that he is disabled for someone of his race. He isn't so by our standards but he can't live in our world as we do. He is very much crippled and it's heartbreaking as we are shown rather than told. He doesn't whine but we see how it shattered him as he struggles with it day after day. The loss of his abilities was the loss of his world.

He and the other characters were very real to me and three dimensional. I particularly felt the reality of the two boys in love struggling to survive on the streets. The best part for me is that there was no sexism at all. None. Women could be attractive or not and there wasn't any of the feeling that the writer was picturing the women as they would look in a graphic novel. The men and women were equally strong and all the characters complex. I also like the concept of bigotry both between humans and all the fey as well as between each race of the fey. I really believed this world the author built and I'm eager to read the next one. ( )

I loved this book. It was a little slow paced in the beginning but that was fine because del Franco set up a complex world mostly by showing rather than telling. It started as an urban fantasy police procedural and it was well done. About halfway through the real action started and I couldn't put it down.

I love the main character. He's complex and I like the idea that he is disabled for someone of his race. He isn't so by our standards but he can't live in our world as we do. He is very much crippled and it's heartbreaking as we are shown rather than told. He doesn't whine but we see how it shattered him as he struggles with it day after day. The loss of his abilities was the loss of his world.

He and the other characters were very real to me and three dimensional. I particularly felt the reality of the two boys in love struggling to survive on the streets. The best part for me is that there was no sexism at all. None. Women could be attractive or not and there wasn't any of the feeling that the writer was picturing the women as they would look in a graphic novel. The men and women were equally strong and all the characters complex. I also like the concept of bigotry both between humans and all the fey as well as between each race of the fey. I really believed this world the author built and I'm eager to read the next one. ( )

High praise for this Butcher-esque urban fantasy about a druid whose fall from grace might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

Connor Grey was a hotshot investigator for the Guild, the organization monitoring supernatural crime, before he was wounded in the line of duty. While he's physically whole, Connor lost all his magic - now he scrapes by on disability provided by his former employers, and he's downsized his lifestyle from "lavish" to "meager." He makes extra cash freelancing for the regular police department, which deals with human crime and anything that isn't important enough for Guild to bother with. That's how Connor gets called in to investigate a string of fey murders - for three Tuesdays in a row, male fairy prostitutes have turned up dead, the bodies missing a heart and left to rot in dark alleys on the wrong side of town.

Connor has to confront the fact that back in his "glory days" - when he was rich and important - he would have ignored this case, too. He was only interested in furthering his career, so he only took the kind of high-profile cases that would help him up the ladder. Murdered prostitutes just wouldn't qualify. It's not just the case, either - he has to ask from help from people he used to treat like underlings, barely worth of his notice, and they're not ready to forget his former rudeness. As for his druidic magic? Well, he can try regaining it - if he starts from the beginning, retraining himself like a novice. It's all very humbling.

One thing I really liked about Unshapely Things is that it's the first mystery I've read in a long, long while where the detective seemed to do any serious gruntwork. Connor does his fair share of interviewing shady characters and setting up cloak-and-dagger routines, but he also makes time for research and annoying phone calls. I hate it when I read a book and the protagonist really needs some vital piece of information, but is always too distracted to seek it out - and it's not like it takes pages and pages to explain, either. So yeah, I was pleased that when Connor Grey needs information he actually grabs a book or consults an expert.

It turns out that his prostitute case is much bigger than it originally seemed, and plunges the reader into the murky world of fae politics. Fae politics seem to be dominated by the fairy-elf rivalry, which is woven into historical conflicts like World War II, and continues to play itself out in a global peace summit taking place while Connor is investigating. The only part of the book I didn't like was when Connor attended a party where all the guests were prominent citizens of one kind or another, and the description of it was really pitch-perfect, serious and dull as dirt. I guess I shouldn't slam the guy for getting something right, but I was itching to get out of there before Connor was.

The characters are great, the plot was well developed, and it built up to a satisfyingly thrilling conclusion. This book didn't have the kind of magnetic pull that some others do, that can't-put-it-down compulsive quality, but I will definitely continue with this series. ( )

A good start to a series. The author's done a good job turning Boston into a partially supernatural place, but still keeping that Boston feel. The rules for his new world appear to make sense (so far) and I'm interested in finding out what will happen to these characters in the future. ( )

3.5 stars.

a solid first entry into an urban-fantasy detective-noir series, wherein a former druid helps the human police work through a series of fairy prostitute murders. there's human/fey politics, a bit of magic, reasonably intelligent people thinking stuff through, a dark but not gratuitously gory underworld, and no obnoxiously cutesy sidekicks. sure, we're not cutting a whole lot of new ground and you've read parts of this before: by now UF is generally either crap or comfort food. this one is definitely the latter, and worth moving on to the sequel. ( )