Tanya Huff

IN A NUTSHELL
In theory, I shouldn't have bought this book. Firstly, it's a cosy Lovecraftian horror romcom novel - that shouldn't even be possible. Secondly, it's a romance with an insta-love plot. In practice, it's a Tanya Huff novel, so I knew that, however improbable it seemed, it was going to be fun.. I love her playful humour, her quirky but likeable characters and her ability to make the supernatural seem real and absurd at the same time. As I expected, this was one big smile and left show more me hoping it would be the first in a series.

I don’t normally enjoy romance novels, especially when the plot has a heavy dose of insta-love. BUT, this was a Tanya Huff romance, so exceptions had to be made.

‘Direct Descendant‘ kept me smiling even though bits of the book would normally qualify it as a Lovecraftian horror novel. I'm not a fan of Eldritch horrors with tentacles, but Tanya Huff managed to make some of them (the ones that weren't trying to kill everyone) seem cute.

The small lakeside town of Argen has everything a horror novel needs: a centuries old deal, sealed in blood, with THE DARK (undefined but definitely scary enough to justify being capitalised), a pair of hellhounds, flocks of lethally carnivorous shadows, revenants, a horde of eldritch horrors, and a lake where anyone who swims past the buoys gets eaten by Alice, the resident lake monster.

It's not the most obvious setting for a RomCom, especially when you add in an evil plot to release Hell on Earth, Nor is it usual to have one of our may-be-fated-to-be-together-or-may-be-forced-apart-forever lovers at the centre of the romance is THE MOUTH OF THE DARK, a role that doesn’t automatically place her on the side of the angels, requires her to lie to the woman she’s falling for.

The story is told from two points of view: Cassidy Prewitt, a direct descendant of one of the town's founders, part owner of the silver mine, local baker and MOUTH OF THE DARK and Melanie Solvich, an unemployed teacher from Toronto who has taken on a side-gig for which she is spectacularly unqualfied, to spend a week in Argen gathering data on the last days of a young man who disappeared there, apparent.y eaten by a bear.

I enjoyed the insider/outsider views. In the audiobook, Cassie and Melanie each had their own narrator, which worked well.

This isn't a horror story. There isn't a lot of tension. There are a lot of laughs. The insta-love takes the suspense out of the romance, but there are a few (very atypical for a RomCom) obstacles that put the relationship at risk. There's also a larger plot. It takes a while to unfold, and it's not the most memorable thing about the book, but it shapes the romance.

''Direct Descendant' reminded me of Tanya Huff's 'Gale Women' series. If you liked that, you'll probably like this.

I had a lot of fun with this book. It works as a standalone, but I’d be happy to go back to Lake Argen if Tanya Huff wants to take these characters further.

I recommend the audiobook version. I liked both narrators. My wife point out to me that Melanie's narrator sounds a lot like Sarah Michelle Gellar playing Buffy. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rClWmvIvaA show less

An Ancient Peace
"An Ancient Peace" is the sixth book in the "Confederation" series. It follows straight on from "The Truth of Valor". Despite this, the publishers have decided to list it as "Peacekeeper #1". Don't start here, you'll miss all the fun. Start at "Valor's Choice".

"An Ancient Peace" is an entertaining mix of SF (ex-)Military and treasure hunt thriller, that steps beyond either genre by having a very non-martial view of the world ("kill the enemy" is replaced by "get the job done show more and get my people out alive") and an unfailing ability to surprise.

The book bursts into action from the first page, with Torin and her team taking down a para-military hate group called "Human's First". It's a nice action piece made better by Torin's disdain for a group that thinks "Human's First" needs an apostrophe.

One of the things I enjoy most about Tanya Huff's books is her ability to produce a fresh version of a familiar trope. In "An Ancient Peace" she does this at least twice.

The early part of the book is a potential "Rambo" situation - ex-soliders in peace time being viewed as too violent and uncivilised to be in the company of those they fought and died to protect - except, in Tanya Huff's version, the soldiers out-manouver the local authorities, the unprovoked violence doesn't escalate and yet you're still left with the certain knowledge that ex-Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr's small team are significantly more dangerous than Rambo. The situation also raises interesting possible future threads about how the allegedly n0n-violent "Elder Races" will treat the races they recruited to fight on their behalf, now the war is over.

The next trope is a sort of Lara Croft Tomb Raider theme - exploring the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient race in search of treasure, except in Tanya Huff's version, the searchers are either desperate or mercenary or both and the race that set the traps is depicted as insane.

Once again, Torin Kerr faces hard decisions that have become more morally ambiguous and more personal now that she no longer has the weight of the Corp behind her. The results are quite surprising and kept me guessing right up to the end of the book. show less

Oh, yes, very much love. I liked Claire, I like how she's not so good at working with normal things because her job as a Keeper means she usually comes in after the fact and cleans up messes. She worries about things, she's competent in some areas and not great in others, she's got trouble with her much-younger sister (can I ever relate!), she makes mistakes and she fixes them.

I thought I'd hate the cat, but, no, I didn't. He had that whole "wise otherworldly supernatural cat" thing going show more on, but it was tempered with enough normal cat issues (he's old, he hates his geriatric cat food, he wants a steak) to actually make me like him.

Jacques--the ghost--was annoying and very much not my type. I couldn't understand why Claire went for him at all. Personally, I would have exorcised his ass and sent him on his way, not scattered his anchors throughout the hotel so he could go everywhere. Her attraction to him felt forced. I can fanwank it, but I shouldn't have to.

Shut up, all of you, I fell in love with Dean. I mean, come on. He's perfect. Okay, no, he isn't perfect, he goes through that "I did one wrong thing, I'm a bad evil person" phase, but, um, used to that. He cooks, he cleans like crazy, he's about the definition of protect and serve and we all know how I feel about that. And, oh, he blushes. The whole thing he and Claire were doing, not recognizing their attraction, denying it, flailing because they don't know what to do, really worked for me. Mostly it worked because it wasn't the focus of the story, but it did exist, and it was there. It was neither overly concentrated on nor ignored. (Though, we had our clue when the first thing Claire did was notice he was very grounded--hi, ping my attraction meter--and the second was check out his ass.) show less

I’ve had the full range of reactions to Huff’s books, from deep enjoyment to horrified revulsion. I really wanted to like this book, if only because most of the bad reviews I read were turned off by the occasional F-bomb and the copious sex between cousins (not considered incest in many cultures, including the protagonist’s!). Also, I don’t mind having to figure out the world’s rules as I go along, nor do I mind infodumps, which this book somehow managed to combine. However, smug show more essentialism trumped casual acceptance of sexuality, both het and gay, and because the essentialism was reduced to a tic I couldn’t ignore it for more than a page at a time. Sigh.

Um, summary: Allie Gale, member of a powerful family of witches that always gets what it wants and can make anything happen via charms (sometimes sent in pies), including getting you a phone that always works and never costs any money, inherits her grandmother’s curio shop in Calgary, away from the “aunties,” and goes there to investigate what happened to her grandmother. Cue leprechauns, sex with a mysterious stranger who has a hidden agenda, sorcerors, and dragons.

I cannot begin to express how annoyed I was at the repeated (seriously, about once a page) trope “Gale girls X” where X is some blanket statement, mostly about taking care of the people they cared about or getting what they wanted—with the occasional variation for “Gale boys Y” where Y is about having sex, choosing which Gale girl they wanted to mate with, or going power-crazy in the way that the most powerful Gale boys always do. When Gale girls get old enough, they become “aunties,” powerful and meddling with each other. Though Allie and her cousin Charlie rebel cute against the aunties, it’s just that they don’t want to do what they’re told; they have no compunctions about running roughshod over other people if they’re the ones making the Gale decisions. Gale girls get what they want, and that includes getting public services and plane tickets whenever they want them. I guess whoever was going to get them in the ordinary course of events is just out of luck. Non-Gales are pets, including the man Allie was formerly in unrequited love with, who seems to have been modeled on Jared Padalecki physically. Look, I don’t care if your characters have lots of sex between cousins and I’m all for women who get more powerful with age, but I have a real problem with being expected to enjoy a family (and it’s clear that free will is not in effect and that these habits just breed true, like magic and grey eyes) that simply doesn’t regard other people as worth consideration unless some Gale decides that those non-Gales are specifically and individually worth taking under the Gale wing. Perhaps all the Gale-ing was supposed to be cutesy, but I found it not just creepy but actively offensive. show less