I received a copy of
this book courtesy of the publisher from NetGalley.
I discovered this title through a fellow blogger a few weeks ago. We
seem to have fairly similar tastes when it comes to urban fantasy so when she
listed this book as one of the best books she’s read so far this year, I know
that I absolutely had to get my hands on a copy! In this case I was very
fortunate and got approved for the ARC on NetGalley.
Information:
Title: Royal Street
Author: Suzanne
Johnson
Series: Sentinels of New Orleans #1
Publisher: Tom Doherty
Associates
Target Audience: Adult
Genre: Urban fantasy
Length: 352 pages
Story: As the
junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more
potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like
rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St.
Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything
that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.
Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’
fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.
While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain
surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now,
the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with
ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.
To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing,
the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new
partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The
search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns
the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest
places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.
Thoughts and
impressions: I adored the opening
scene of this book! DJ, our heroine, is on a mission to send Jean Lafitte – one
of New Orleans’s historical undead – back to the beyond and she finds herself
very disturbed that he’s adapted to the modern era by carrying around fruit-flavoured
condoms on his person! I think it takes guts to open with a scene like that but
Suzanne Johnson pulled it off flawlessly!
The world building was
fairly strong, though with some plot holes. The biggest one of these was that
it’s mentioned that the wizards from Europe and America step in to help each
other in dire situations – be this the American wizards travelling to Europe to
fight in a war between wizards and other preternaturals (“pretes”), or the
European wizards travelling to the US to deal with the preternatural aftermath
of a hurricane in Florida a few years before. And yet, after Katrina hits and
devastates the New Orleans area, only one
other human preternatural – European or American – steps in to help this deputy with the task of getting things
back under control.
Other than this most
glaring problem, the world building could easily stand on its own two feet
despite the fact that we didn’t meet many of the various preternatural races
that exist here. There’s no rush of course; in fact, I believe that it was much
better this way with lots still left to explore in future books. The series has
a lot of potential to be one that hooks UF readers across the board. It
certainly succeeded in hooking me!
In this first book,
the pretes that are dealt with the most are what are called the historical
undead. These are those people who lived and died in a certain area during
their natural life and even after their deaths they remain in the collective memory
of current society. So long as people remember their names, they are
essentially immortal but if their names are forgotten then they will disappear.
I have, of course, come across ideas like this before but I’m pretty sure it’s
the first time I’ve seen them used to this extent in a book. It was actually a
very interesting idea as it allowed for use of such historical figures as Louis
Armstrong, Marie Laveau and Jean Lafitte (though I have to admit that I hadn’t
heard of Lafitte before – I’m not exactly “up” on New Orleans culture).
I actually really
liked Lafitte’s character. He was the sort of baddy that you can really root
for as the reader. For a while I even entertained the prospect of him as a
potential romantic interest. He might be several centuries dead, in it for
himself and a reprobate (he’s a pirate – what pirate isn’t a reprobate?) but he
was quirky and fun. Hey, I’ve read books where the romantic interest was much
worse than Jean Lafitte in Royal Street!
He wasn’t the romantic interest, but he was still a fun character.
It was also
interesting to view hurricane Katrina through the eyes of a local. I don’t
think it really packed the emotional punch that the author was aiming for, but
it was certainly a very different experience to the one I went through at the
time. Still, I didn’t really feel complete despair at the loss of human life or
the death of a beloved city. I was, however, able to build these emotions up
for myself through what was not said in the narrative. The quotes from the
newspapers were a good touch as well.
DJ was a good
character, if slow at times. She so
desperately wanted to reach that happy ending where she’d get her mentor back
and no one gets hurt that she was willing to overlook some blindingly obvious
evidence. This said, I have to admit that she did often allow herself to get
distracted by her feelings towards her new partner, Alex, and his cousin, Jake.
It meant that sometimes the plot would stagnate as she floundered in waters
that she tried very hard to pretend didn’t even exist. She was frustrating at
times, but in the long run I liked her and I suppose that’s what’s most
important.
All in all, I found
this book to be an interesting introduction to a new series that I want more
of. Apparently the next book is going to be about undines (mermaids) – I can’t
wait!
Style: I liked the dry sarcasm of the style that would rear
its head from time to time. Just little things like when DJ mentions that
luckily she got hit on the other shoulder to the one that was already bruised
because she likes to have symmetrical bruises.
Final verdict: I really enjoyed this book! I had some minor issues
with it but they were so minor that they didn’t affect my enjoyment of it in
the least. I’d definitely recommend to fans of this style of urban fantasy. 5
stars
Extra notes: Bad language is present. Sex is not.
