Sunday, June 13, 2010

The Enchantment Emporium / Tanya Huff

The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff. 473 p.

A pretty enjoyable urban fantasy featuring a family of powerful magic-users, the Gales ("wizards" isn't quite accurate but I didn't want to expand our tags list unnecessarily). Allie gets a letter from her Gran willing her a junk shop in Calgary--across the country from her close-knit but sometimes smothering family--so, since Allie just lost her job, she goes to investigate the shop and what happened to her Gran. When she arrives, Allie realizes that the "local community" that the shop serves is the fae community.... Adventure ensues.

A note on the writing: the author clearly made a choice here to not explain things in the text, instead letting the reader pick them up by context. In general I like that approach, but I think she may have overdone it just a tad--especially with the background of the Gale family, which is quite complex and still somewhat confusing to me in spots even though I've finished the book. On the other hand, she does explain what a monkey's paw is and how it works, yet she mentions a Hand of Glory (in passing, true) without any sort of explanation. I would think a casual reader is much more likely to know what a monkey's paw is--there's a Simpsons episode featuring one, right?--than a Hand of Glory.

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