Zoe Faust is hundreds of years old, having somehow (I'm still a little murky on the details) sort of accidentally used the Elixir of Life for herself rather than someone else she had tried to save. She has Guilt. So she's moved around quite a bit and has landed in Portland, Oregon because she's decided to get back in the business of being an alchemist. Again, I'm not exactly sure why. I'm not trying to be too snarky about this because there were some fun parts to this book, particularly the character of Dorian Robert-Houdin, a gargoyle who has come to life and who is relying on Zoe to save him (he's turning back into stone), due to her past skills as an alchemist. She tries to study more about what could have happened to Dorian in between slugging gallons of different types of reviving teas along with restorative smoothies and then going to a tea shop to drink even more tea. I don't know. It was hard to follow, I'm not going to lie. And she also befriends a 14 year old boy with a neglectful mother who discovers that Dorian is a living gargoyle. And she's also caught up in (and is possibly a suspect for) a couple of murders and she has a major crush on the detective working the case for reasons unknown because there isn't much to his character.
My favorite things about this book really were the scenes with Dorian. His character was delightful. But Zoe's actions and choices were strange. In one scene she bolts from a place in paralyzing but difficult to explain terror, but never bothers to check back on the people in the place who were in some sort of supernatural danger, and just goes about the day, probably after making herself a calming smoothie or cup of tea or both. In a couple of scenes she gives compromised people a concoction of her own making because she evidently knows more than the doctors treating the people and never worries about what her concoctions might do to the person, just worries about getting caught. It was a trial to finish this and I won't continue the series. But hey, you gotta try something new once in a while! And just because I didn't like it doesn't mean there aren't redeeming qualities. It just wasn't my cup of herbal tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment