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Title: Sword-edged Blonde
Series: Eddie LaCrosse #1
Author: Alex Bledso
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 320
Words: 82K
| Synopsis: |
Eddie LaCrosse is a sword jockey, ie, a private detective. He’s hired by his childhood friend King Phil to prove that King Phil’s wife didn’t kill and then eat their newborn baby.
Along the way Eddie has to revisit his past and the reason he left the kingdom that Phil now rules.
Eddie solves the case, vindicates Phil’s faith in his wife, takes down an evil dwarf that has been alive over 500 years and finds the love of his life prophesied about over 10 years ago.
| My Thoughts: |
While I was reading this I was fully into the story and enjoying it. However, once the story ended and I began thinking about what I had read, a couple of things came to the forefront for me.
First, I am reading more and more noir’ish Private Eye books. What’s more, I am generally liking them too. The Grimnoir, The Arcane Casebook, Garrett PI, etc. The thing is, those all have elements of the PI AND some other element (urban fantasy, fantasy). This, though, only gave lip service to the fantasy element. The only fantastic thing was that the wife of King Phillip used to be a goddess and that the evil dwarf was actually just a human who had messed with the goddess and been punished. That’s it. No other races, no magic spells, no grimoires, not even one magic sword. Not cool.
In conjunction with that was the deliberate anachronisms that the author uses. Between names of people that you’d expect to meet on the street today, to terms about weapons and businesses that fully belong in the 21st century, Bledsoe kept pulling me out of the story. It was obviously deliberate and meant as some sort of selling point to distinguish the series but it did not work for me one tiny bit.
I’ve been debating about whether to keep on with the series. Like I said, while I was reading I was enjoying, but the moment I stopped, well, it all came crashing down. And it wasn’t like I was enjoying the read on a Neal Asher level. This was a grocery store frozen cheese pizza kind of enjoyment. With that, I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series. There are so many other books I can try out (and hopefully enjoy more) that it isn’t worth continuing this “just because I didn’t hate it”.
★★★☆☆
Nothing wrong with a grocery store frozen cheese pizza! But sounds like the author didn’t take advantage of the genre…
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Whatever the reason, this just didn’t make me want to read more about the character or the world. I’m chalking this one up to experience…
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Just by reading the blurb I was sat there thinking ‘this sounds insane!’
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And it worked. Like I wrote, I was interested while reading but the flaws hit me upon reflection. And there are several more in the series, so if someone likes the first book, at least they’ve got some good reads ahead of them. I’m just cutting my losses while I’m ahead 🙂
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This sounds crazy!
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I know, right? The thing is, it took quite some time to lead up to all of that, so it never “grabbed” me. If it had started out with everything, I would have been like “Wow, this is nuts, I love it!” 😀
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Huh, not for me, it seems. The things you didn’t like about it would probably drive me crazy in the very beginning and I’d just DNF the book 😉
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Glad to have saved you the frustration 🙂
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Blending magical elements and a more modern world requires some finesse, in my opinion, and not everyone can manage that with a modicum of success… That said, there are more books in heaven and Earth, Bookstooge, than are dreamt in your philosophy, so you will certainly find a better one soon! 😉
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And the older I get, the more I realize there are more than enough books that I WILL like that no time needs to be spent on chasing down the mediocre ones 🙂
The blending “could have” worked, except I think the author was trying to make it stand out? So yeah, it just didn’t work for me…
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Aaahh, yes. I can see why you’d bail on the rest of this series. I’ve never been much of a fan of those extremely-low-fantasy series, especially if it’s not warned beforehand.
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Sometimes low fantasy works for me, you know? But sometimes it just falls flat and this seems to be one of those times
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If your feelings after the first book are the way they are, i do not know if it would be worth reading the other in the series…
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Yeah, I decided to remove the rest of the series from my tbr and replace it with another.
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