Review Catch-Up: Spellbent by Lucy A. Snyder

[megwrites]

Title: Spellbent
Author: Lucy A. Snyder (las; author's website)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Del Rey





Basic Plotline: Jessie Shimmer is a witch-in-training. When her teacher and lover, Cooper, gets sucked into hell and she loses an arm to a vicious monster, her life is turned upside down with a powerful wizard who's got it out for her. With everything taken away from her and put under an order to be shunned by all other witches, she has to find a way to get this wizard off her back and pull Cooper out of hell.

The Positives: This is very much a book that's typical of urban fantasy right now, but it's a bit better quality. Jessie Shimmer is, on the whole at least 60% less shallow, self-centered, or too-stupid-to-live than the vast majority of heroines. Of course, she's still and white and thin and in her twenties, but hey. At least she gets maimed.

I appreciated very much that Jessie's injuries, while they did get some healing, were not instantly taken way from her. She gets some magical and somewhat non-helpful assistive devices of sorts, but the consequences remained. She lost an arm and it stayed lost. That kind of willingness to build a world with consequences, ugly ones, is something that really made this book better than most for me, even if it wasn't anything worldchanging.

Jessie doesn't focus overly much on what she's wearing or fashion or brand names for the most part and I really appreciated that. I swear to god if I have to read one more protagonist talking about her high fucking heels in the middle of a fight scene, I'm going to start damaging property. So the fact that this book didn't do that? Bonus. She's a fairly smart character who actually does smart things. While the plot and environment she's written into were not designed as smartly, at least the character is.

The secondary characters were enjoyable, though they didn't outshine the protagonist. I didn't particularly like anyone more than I did Jessie. Most times, I love the supporting cast and want the main character to die in a fire and the others to roast marshmallows over the resulting blaze.

The relationship between Cooper and Jessie was also unique in that it was an established relationship and the book didn't have any "will they/won't they?" type subplots that are just as much urban fantasy's mainstay as paranormal romance. I bought their relationship for the most part, and liked that for once, we have a heroine in a stable relationship who seemed to be living a rather normal life.


The Negatives: This was a deeply flawed book, for two main reasons - the world building and the villain were unconvincing and contrived.

The first flaw was the constant sense of events being shaped to help Jessie succeed in her goal. She gets badly injured? A nice witch friend is there to keep her alive. Hasn't finished her training as a witch? Her non-verbal demon-in-a-ferret familiar suddenly speaks and not only has a near encyclopedic knowledge of things that she needs, but is willing to help her against the orders of those who have power over it. When she needs food and help at her apartment? There's a friendly and overly dialectical neighbor there to help her out and offer down-home opinions about the world along with it. Needs to get into hell? Her boyfriend's brother conveniently has an entire closet full of things to outfit her for her trip because he just happened to foresee years ago that she'd need them.

The situation Jessie is initially dropped into seemed so wonderfully impossible and dire. The fact that the author stuck to a major consequence and the heroine actually got hurt really scored points with me, so the book really falters when it turns out the process of getting out of this involves getting magical ingredients from Target, listen to her talking ferret, pick up some stuff her boyfriend's brother conveniently has waiting for her and there you go.

It all strained my credulity and ruined what I think could've been a genre-busting, really revolutionary book. I wanted to see Jessie realize that no help was coming, I wanted to see her left completely alone. No nice neighbors or friends or knowledgeable familiar or witch friend. I wanted to see a heroine really get dropped into an impossible situation and really get tough and smart and inventive. I wanted to see Jessie have to really change herself in order to rise to the occasion. I wanted to see her pull something like a Sarah Connor and disappear for a while, seeking under-the-radar training and teaching until she could come back a stronger, wiser person capable of fighting back.

Of course, that would violate the "this adventure must take two weeks or less" rule of Urban Fantasy, where in your plot must resolve itself in the time it takes to get something economy shipped from coast to coast. Because heavens forfend that you take your time and slow down and allow people to really shape themselves around things going on.

The scene in which she takes Pal into the Target (brand name dropping, something else I loathe) and he can teach her a spell so she can steal all that she needs with a cute little spell dance really made me realize that this is NOT the game changing work of genius I'm longing for. I really could not buy that a real world store would sell magical ingredients that nobody noticed.

The second big flaw was Benedict Jordan. He was in no way a decent villain, and thus Jessie's entire struggle felt somewhat meaningless. Jordan wasn't smart enough, I didn't really believe his motives, and ended up feeling somewhat sorry for the guy.

The problem with Jordan was the problem with most urban fantasy villains. They're very stupid and apparently they have all missed the invention of the semi-automatic. His guys had Jessie, and if Benedict really wanted his family's name kept clean, why not have her shot? There's a shotgun on the cover for crying out loud. Obviously, they use them in this world so why don't Jordan's cronies use them to dispose of Jessie?

I didn't buy Jordan's motives, either. We're not told that there's any reason why revealing his father as an evil bastard will hurt Jordan personally, cost him power or wealth. Why go through all the trouble of wrecking up Jessie's life (and thus pointing the finger at yourself as the one being responsible and giving her a lead)? Why not let the portal suck Cooper up, and if anyone ever finds out, pretend you were so traumatized that you've got Magic Amnesia or something?

I wasn't convinced that Jordan stood to lose all that much. He knew about Cooper and let the guy run around free as the wind for YEARS, knowing that risk was there, and did nothing. What kept him from shooting Cooper in the head (or having someone do it)? That works great. Even plucky white chicks can't rescue their boyfriends from dead. Nor was I convinced that Jordan was evil as opposed to just cowardly for not revisiting his family's hell and rescuing his brothers.

Nor did I understand why Jordan caved so quickly and didn't try to kill her again (the Virtus obviously didn't care, so why not?) and why none of his servants, cronies, or minions tried to help or go after Jessie afterwards. This is why you give people guns and tell them to take headshots. It prevents ridiculous plotlines and over the top revenge monologues.

Those were my two biggest issues with the book. There were other minor flaws, such as the Jizz Kids/homunculi which seem to be there simply to be disgusting. I also didn't get why Jessie didn't go straight to Cooper's brother in the beginning to at least try to tell him that his only family got sucked into hell. I kept thinking "run! go to Cooper's brother, tell him what happened! They must call him the Warlock for a reason!"

Nor do I particularly care for the hints that Jessie's parentage is going to result in her being Super Special (on top of being a witch). Sometimes I like "lost heir" plotlines, and if I end up picking up the sequel, I'll see where it goes - but so far I don't think it's going to be something that I'll enjoy. Especially after she killed a Virtus out of nowhere. I'm all for letting heroines be awesome as heroes and letting them do all the unrealistic but really cool things that guys do, but I'd call this out on any character of any gender persuasion. Seriously? The big, omniscient rulers who have overseen magic and witches and humanity since time immemorial and she takes one down? Just like that?

Over all, the book is good. It's not a monumental read, and if you're looking for that spectacular find that will really wow you, this isn't it. If you're looking for a fun read that can be breezed through and isn't as mindnumbing as many other selections out there in chain retailers and airport bookstores? This might be a good choice.

CoC Score: 0/10. This part really pissed me off. There were no identifiable CoC in this entire book. If I'm wrong, some one point it out to me (I would love to be proven wrong). But so far as I can tell, all the people with speaking parts were either white or not human. There are some very brief, passing, one word mentions of other cultures when Jessie is assembling potions. She mentions, for instance, poultices that may have been used by Hindu people (which in the context of the sentence is kind of not useful and non-specific). So, basically, this world will appropriate other people's magic but won't actually give them speaking parts.

Gender Score: 9/10. There weren't really any skanky gender dynamics here, even in the House of Horrors, because the abuse dealt to the wife for having an affair was shown as being very evil and wrong and creepy. That was good. A point deducted because there was some unevenness in the gendering of the main cast (though it was small).

GLBT Score: 0/10. No significant GLBT characters or situations. No reason for that either. It's modern day America. And anyone who wants to talk, "But it's Ohio!" at me can just have a nice frosty glass of Shut Up, served free all day long. The book is heavily hetero/cis centric, focusing on Jessie's relationship with Cooper, Warlock's with Opal, Jordan's evil dad with his poor mom. At least one person in this novel could've identified queer. the familiars could have at least been non-binary gendered. They're other dimensional creatures! Come on!

Ablism Score: 6 or 7/10. It's an interesting question. I can see why someone might give it a great score or a horrible score on this count. The heroine becomes disabled, and does not get instantly cured. She deals with her disability, but it is not framed as world ending or the end of her ability to be a heroine (a good thing). I had an issue with the conversation she has with the security guard at the front door of the store she goes to (umm, I've never seen a security guard in front of a Target, BTW), it felt problematic to me in a lot of ways I can't quite articulate. I also appreciated that she didn't automatically want to go back to having her regular arm and wanted to try being functional with the new fire-arm she has now. It's a tricky issue for me, but overall I think it was treated better-than-average.

I'd rate this a bit higher (7/8), but there were several uses of "crazy"/"nuts"/"insane" and the like in various places as insults or demeaning descriptors and talk of "mental institutions" as though going into one would've been a sentence of doom for Jessie. While not all in-patient psychiatric facilities are perfect and there are abuses in the mental health care system in America, such facilities can be life saving for people who need in-patient treatment. Nor do most institutions try to imprison patients like some kind of rat trap from which no one escapes. The opposite is true in too many cases. There are sometimes so few beds that many people must either kick people out long before they're ready to be out-patient or not admit them at all, giving them nowhere to go. Reinforcing that going into one is Just LIke Jail really adds to a mess of nasty cultural memes in the U.S. about psychiatric treatment.