If only these novels stayed in The Edge

Confession, I only read half of this novel and then the last chapter. I don’t know if there are going to be any more books in this series, but I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of them. I’m about a week and a half out of finishing this one (which is actually unique, I tend to review immediately after finishing so the thoughts are all still fresh. But I was on vacation and have quite a backlog of books to review, oops) and I’m still just disappointed.

So once again we have a male character, whom we’ve already met, who comes into contact with a woman, new to us, and love interest for him. In this case we’ve got Richard, one of the Mar clan introduced in book two and Charlotte de Ney who is a Weird blueblood hiding in The Edge from her past. Richard is  dedicated to ending the slave trade and pulls Charlotte into the whole scheme. They fall in love and get mixed up in the politics of the Weird slave trade at the same time.

I was completely drawn  in for the first half of the novel, where the characters were introduced and we see why Charlotte left the Weird and her life in the Edge. Even the early parts of the novel that were set in the Weird didn’t turn me off to much, but the moment the book started to delve into the politics of the Weird I got bored. I started this series because it was a look at magic and technology existing in a delicate balance between two worlds. I thought it was going to be a look at rural America from an urban fantasy type perspective, sadly the books became far more obsessed with the magical fairyland that exists on the other side of the border. Perhaps I would have been more interested if I didn’t find the world building for the Weird really implausible, and the deeper the authors delve into it, the less I like it. I love alternate history earth stories in theory, in practice I find that most authors haven’t done enough historical research to really do a good job. I’m not a historian at all, just picky I guess.

I think you can probably skip this one. The first book, and even the second, in this series are totally worth reading but I wouldn’t recommend going any further with it.