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Widdershins #1 by Jordan L. Hawk
(2.5 out of 5 stars)*
Hm.
I really enjoyed the Magpie lord series. I figured this
series would be similar, and picked the first. I was quite wrong. Here is a
list of reasons I disliked it.
1) Percival, the protagonist of the story, has abysmal
self-esteem. Page after page I kept reading his “oh, poor me” inner dialogue
and wanted to slap him back to his senses, or just slap him. Poor Percival who
can speak 13 languages, grew up in a rich family and yet he’s as socially adept
as a mute blindfolded crippled orangutan. It didn’t make sense and quickly grew
tiring and started grating on my nerves.
2) The handsome stranger (in this case, a detective) who
enters his life has issues too, underneath the flair, swagger and bravado. I
found it predictable and honestly, boring.
3) Percival’s only friend is a strong female character who
quickly becomes insufferable. She is the voice of reason, yet she is
overbearing and irritating in her own special way. I don’t mean she ought to be
more lady-like and fragile. She barges into Percival’s office whenever she
needs to unwind by ranting or use his services as a translator, and won’t take
no for an answer. I would have politely told her to get stuffed and shut the
door in her face, but maybe that’s just me.
4) The other thing I didn't like was the mixture of romance
and cosmic horror elements. I enjoy romance and adore H.P. Lovecraft. A good
combination can make the romance hotter and the horror colder. In this book
they have a detrimental effect on each other. More often than not, the two
genres get in each other’s way, toning down the horror element and making the
romance feel out of place. I felt I was reading two separate books that somehow
got mixed together, and it did not get better. I had the mental image of a
hearse driver and a can-can dancer playing basketball in a tiny room stuffed
with furniture. Whenever one of them was about to score a point, they tripped on
each other or the furniture.
5) Oh, by the way. The "world is about to end"
thing... ugh. Generally speaking, the end of the world is not something easy to
happen, otherwise it would have happened every Saturday night. Do you have any
idea how many weirdos exist out there, and I mean in real life? If a team of
occultists could bring about the end of the world just because the stars are at
the right place, we would all be screwed. If the stars were indeed at an
unusual and rare position, I for one would have expected more 'warnings', in
the form of natural phenomena taking place all over Percival's world, i.e.
earthquakes, volcanoes, strange plagues, rains of animals etc. It's not an
event like an outsider winning the badminton championship, that can pass
unnoticed if you're not into badminton. On a clusterfuck scale of one to ten
this is a solid eleven, so let's just treat it with some respect, OK?
To sum up, it’s not a bad book. I’ve read books that can
open holes in reality by how bad they were. I sometimes think Necronomicon was
in reality a YA abomination later to be turned into a fully-fledged franchise,
and that’s why it drove occultists mad. Well, Widdershins definitely isn’t one
of those. It’s well-written and it has its moments. I guess it just didn’t work
for me.
*My star rating and what it means:
Zero stars: Why me?!? I do come across books that aren't really books, but brain damage in disguise.
For reasons you can all understand, I won't be publishing reviews on
them. I tend to become enraged and say things I later on regret.
One star: Meh... I didn't like it and won't be keeping it. It might be the book, or it might be me. I'll try to clarify in my review.
Two stars: Average/ Okay.
Either the kind of light/ undemanding book you read and don't remember
in a month, or suffering from flaws that prevented it from realising its
potential.
Three stars: Better than average. Good
moments, memorable characters and/ or plot, maybe good sense of
humour... Not to die for, but not feeling like you wasted your time and
money either.
Four stars: Wow, that was good! Definitely keeping it and checking to see what else I can buy from the same writer.
Five stars: Oh. My. Goodness. The
kind of book you buy as a gift to all your friends, praise to random
strangers on the bus, and re-read until the pages fall out and the
corners are no longer corners, but round.
