The Wild Ways from Tanya Huff and a sequel to The Enchantment Emporium.
In the first book we meet a magical family called the Gales who command enough respect that the supernatural tends to leave them alone; unless they’re really powerful. The Wild Ways follows one of my favourite characters from the book, Charlotte Gale, who tends to roam around (a wild power) rather than be tethered to one patch of land like the other Gales.
That’s a gamble. I’d invested in the main characters of The Enchantment Emporium and wanted to know what happens next to them (is it yo-yo related, I wondered). As it happens it’s a fairly safe gamble since Charlotte is such a good character and we get plenty of appearances from old favourites along the way.
The plot comes to life with Huff’s usual skillful style. An oil company wants to drill near a seal colony. The environmental movement is clever, well-funded and able to block this potentially damaging exercise until a mysterious woman turns up and starts helping the big business.
Seal colony. There’s that but also the family of Selkies, celtic seal-fairies, involved too. While Charlie might just want to tour with her band she soon gets caught up in the struggle.
I’m a big fan of Tanya Huff’s writing style. It’s like candy to me. It goes down easy, it’s something I reach for when I need something to energise me rather than fight with but (and just like with too much sugar) I sometimes feel a bit guilty afterwards. I don’t know why. Has the geek community become so snobbish that unless something is hard to read or so complex/poorly thought out you can debate the meanings with friends that the book isn’t worth reading?
To battle this strange and unfounded sense of guilt I’m going to go out of my way to try and read the last book in the Enchantment Emporium series before too long.
Todate we’ve had more than just interesting characters in scenes with the supernatural. We’ve had a growing mythos and The Wild Ways successfully builds on that. It’s often quite hard to build a high fantasy overlap with an urban setting, but Huff’s managed here. I’m reminded of the World of Darkness Changeling series.
I won’t delay in recommending Enchantment Emporium series or the Wild Way to anyone who’s read the first book.
My copy of The Wild Ways was provided for review.
