Magic Times in the Cajun Swamp

Bayou Moon is the follow up to On the Edge. It’s not a direct sequel, and can be read on its own, but it does star some characters from that novel. It is again, light, easy to read fare.

This time we go to a part of the Edge which exists between the state (here in our mundane world) of Louisiana and the Magical country of Louisiana. It’s magic times in the Cajun swamp is what I’m saying. If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t really follow the ‘history’ of the Weird side of things, or rather I think the authors are forcing some things so that the Weird is just different enough from our side of it.

Also, I’m side eyeing the Voodoo stuff in here. Oh it’s not called Voodoo, but it’s totally Voodoo.

William, who was introduced in the previous novel, is given a very strong reason to go into the swamps of the Edge, called the Mire and meets up with Cerise as Swamp Princess. He goes into the edge to hunt Spider, a Secret Ops operative from the magical country of Louisiana, who is a monster in every sense of the word. Cerise on her end of things is tangled up in this mess because her family is protecting secrets this Spider wants. We get old family blood fueds, mystical swamp creatures, various types of swamp dwellers, and other such Cajun tropes all wrapped up with the Andrews’s unique twists.

I really enjoyed this one, quite a lot more then the first, right up to the last 20% where things got a bit to super-special-magical-whatever for me. I mean, that last 20% was fine, but I choked on a few things. Part of the reason I enjoyed this one is that I much prefer William to Declan, so far as romantic leads go. He’s much more similar to Sean from the Innkeeper Chronicles. Cerise is fine, I really did like her quite a bit, though I don’t really see how she stands out too much from Rose. Which is perhaps another issue I have with these authors. They have stock characters and they tend to stick with them. There’s a troubled teen in this book, Lark who might as well be Julie from the Kate Daniels books. It’s fine, because I don’t mind these characters, but I think if I’d read these books back-to-back-to-back I’d get annoyed. Also this one had far more female characters in strong positions of power, and that was awesome.

All in all, I enjoyed it. I’ll be starting the next one soon.