When is an Urban Fantasy not an Urban Fantasy? What makes a story / novel an urban fantasy? The criteria is rather nebulous, so one might slot Laura Bickle’s Nine of Stars under that heading. It takes place in what appears to be a relatively “real world” but features supernatural creatures out of folklore and myth. Regardless of what it is called, Bickle has soft-launched a urban fantasy / paranormal mystery series with some engaging characters and potentially deep mythology set against the vast canvas of Yellowstone Park and the State of Wyoming. From the publisher:
Winter has always been a deadly season in Temperance, but this time, there’s more to fear than just the cold…
As the daughter of an alchemist, Petra Dee has faced all manner of occult horrors – especially since her arrival in the small town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the creature now stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and leaving only their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface of the return of Skinflint Jack, a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of an ancient bargain.
The new sheriff in town, Owen Rutherford, isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on the trail of both an unsolved case and a fresh kill – a bizarre murder leading him right to Petra’s partner Gabriel. And while Gabe once had little to fear from the mortal world, he’s all too human now. This time, when violence hits close to home, there are no magical solutions.
It’s up to Petra and her coyote sidekick Sig to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being hunting them all – before the trail turns deathly cold.
Our protagonist, geologist Petra Dee, more-than-just-a-coyote Sig, and her friend Gabe find themselves in the midst of a murder mystery with bodies of men and wolves leaving many unanswered questions. In parallel, Owen Rutherford, sheriff and scion of a powerful regional family, is hunting for the killer, too. Only problem is he thinks Gabe is the guilty party. Bickle tells this story with clean prose, engaging characters, and a magnetic narrative that pulled me along through to the end.
To these elements Bickle layers a nicely balanced supernatural element that is intriguing enough to elicit a want for more detail, but not too suffocating where it takes over the plot and characters. Things aren’t quite normal in Temperance, Wyoming. The wolves might not be just wolves, the aforementioned coyote has a deeper understanding of his “master’s” words than any canine should, Petra’s father is an alchemist, Gabe is over a hundred years old and not quite human, and, oh yeah, the killer Petra and Gabe are hunting is not human either. Rather, Skinflint Jack is a creature out of folklore and myth from the 18th Century, half man half deer, possibly, is living out the dictates of an ancient curse.
The two storylines – Petra/Gabe in pursuit of Skinflint Jack and Owen in pursuit of Gabe, are a nice contrast. With Petra and Gabe, we have characters immersed in a supernatural world. Even if they don’t completely understand everything going on (more so for Petra simply because Gabe is over 100 years old), they are equipped to deal with skinwalkers, monsters out of local legend, and wolves transforming into humans. Owen on the other hand is a haunted man in many respects, from his family’s legacy, to the dead girl who follows and advises him. He doesn’t know if he is seeing an actual ghost or if he’s going slightly mad. Bickle does a nice job of keeping the storylines apart enough throughout the novel that their inevitable intertwining provided an amble boost to the already potent storyline.
One good way to hook me as a reader is to give the protagonist a canine familiar: dog, wolf, or in this case Coyote. Make that coyote a little bit like Nighteyes from Robin Hobb’s Farseer Series, and it only strengthens the relationship between canine and human, and creates a more absorbing read especially for a lifelong dog owner like myself. While Petra and Sig’s relationship isn’t too central to the novel, it was a nice feature.
Nine of Stars is the first “print” novel in the Dark Alchemy series, following two e-book exclusive prequels. As a new reader to Bickle’s fiction and this world, Nine of Stars works very well as an introduction and sets up some empathetic, interesting characters, long term conflict that begs for resolution over the course of a few books, and a supernatural backdrop rife for future plot elements.
Recommended.
© 2016 Rob H. Bedford
Mass Market Paperback, December 2016
http://www.laurabickle.com/ | http://www.laurabickle.com/nine-of-stars/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher HarperCollins Voyager
