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I am Jan Xu. Mother, ex-teacher, daughter and wolf. My family is all Lang, Mandarin Chinese for "wolf." We live among the human population of Singapore, looking like any ethnic Singapore-born Chinese. We have adopted the culture of our human counterparts, becoming human. Yet in our chests beat the hearts of wolves, our voices the howls of distant hunters.
An urban fantasy by a Singaporean author who may be better-known to you by her real name, Joyce Chng. While A Wolf at the Door had some problems, it was one of the few recent urban fantasies which I've even liked enough to finish. (By "urban fantasy" I mean the modern "hot and/or wisecracking person kicks supernatural ass in modern times," not the Emma Bull/Charles de Lint "magic in the city" books. Damask's book bridges those categories.)
Most urban fantasy, of the "kicks supernatural ass" variety, fails to hold my interest; it feels bland, plasticky, dull. In what I've read, the protagonists rarely have any relationships outside of romances or power dynamics with their vampire clan/werewolf pack/sugar glider flock, the landscapes tend toward generic American cities, and there's nothing going on other than magic spells, politicking among the pack, romance, and fighting: no details of life that make a world feel real.
Damask doesn't follow any of those patterns. Her Singapore feels completely real, and is a character in its own right. The characters have many relationships of different types: familial, pack, friendships. Jan is happily married and has two young daughters/pups. In fact, the best parts of the book involve daily life as a Singaporean werewolf.
Where the book falls down is plot and structure. There are two timelines running in parallel, one in the present and one in the past. They are poorly divided, sometimes marked "past" and sometimes not (and occasionally marked "past" when they're actually in the present). The storyline in the past is underdeveloped, with way too much tell and not enough show, and is not strongly connected to the present storyline. The present storyline is better, but oddly paced.
Five stars for atmosphere, three for character and prose (sometimes awkward, sometimes quite good), two for structure. But like I said: this is the only urban fantasy I've read all year that I actually finished. The world and setting are very, very good. Also, it's only $1.99 on Amazon: Wolf At the Door
An urban fantasy by a Singaporean author who may be better-known to you by her real name, Joyce Chng. While A Wolf at the Door had some problems, it was one of the few recent urban fantasies which I've even liked enough to finish. (By "urban fantasy" I mean the modern "hot and/or wisecracking person kicks supernatural ass in modern times," not the Emma Bull/Charles de Lint "magic in the city" books. Damask's book bridges those categories.)
Most urban fantasy, of the "kicks supernatural ass" variety, fails to hold my interest; it feels bland, plasticky, dull. In what I've read, the protagonists rarely have any relationships outside of romances or power dynamics with their vampire clan/werewolf pack/sugar glider flock, the landscapes tend toward generic American cities, and there's nothing going on other than magic spells, politicking among the pack, romance, and fighting: no details of life that make a world feel real.
Damask doesn't follow any of those patterns. Her Singapore feels completely real, and is a character in its own right. The characters have many relationships of different types: familial, pack, friendships. Jan is happily married and has two young daughters/pups. In fact, the best parts of the book involve daily life as a Singaporean werewolf.
Where the book falls down is plot and structure. There are two timelines running in parallel, one in the present and one in the past. They are poorly divided, sometimes marked "past" and sometimes not (and occasionally marked "past" when they're actually in the present). The storyline in the past is underdeveloped, with way too much tell and not enough show, and is not strongly connected to the present storyline. The present storyline is better, but oddly paced.
Five stars for atmosphere, three for character and prose (sometimes awkward, sometimes quite good), two for structure. But like I said: this is the only urban fantasy I've read all year that I actually finished. The world and setting are very, very good. Also, it's only $1.99 on Amazon: Wolf At the Door
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(Have you tried Devon Monk's Allie Beckstrom books? I'm not totally caught up on them, but they have some IMO very interesting worldbuilding, and I feel like it's reasonably grounded in the setting, although I grew up just outside the city rather than actually in it, so I can't say for sure. And IIRC, there were definitely non-romantic relationships involved, although a great deal is complicated by how the magic works in this world. They're definitely the most interesting of the modern UF subgenre that I've read recently, and I don't believe they have any vampires or werewolves or other typical supernatural beasties.)
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My favorite piece of Portland fiction to date is Virgina Euwer Wolff's The Mozart Season, which is YA about a teenage girl who plays violin, and fantastic in my vague memory. I was not aware of a "woo, upper-class satire, teehee" subgenre, ew.
Er, but anyway, this has wandered rather off-topic.
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OMFG, YOU READ THAT? I have it! It's so great! Such a great YA novel, and a great picture of Portland, too. Rache, I think you would LOVE it - the narrator is a Jewish girl coming to terms with mixed heritage, but the Holocaust is not the main focus of the story, and her family is very sharp and funny and real. It's just excellent.
-- Yeah, if novels set here aren't, say, Tom Robbins, or paranormal romances, or historical romances (nothing against them but not what I'm looking for), they're about Microsoft or breaking into venture capital whatever, or the music scene. And I'm just like....man, not EVERYBODY here is either Bill Gates or Kurt Cobain. Not even most people. There's so much else! It's really depressing.
Then there's Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. I was not that impressed by the prose style (I will put up with a lot for good atmosphere, characterization, prose style, whatever. But if I don't like having the author's words in my head, if it's not a class assignment or something, I'm outta there).
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I tried reading Boneshaker and got bored. Didn't even notice it was set in the PNW.
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ARGH SPOILER TAG WHY DID YOU NOT WORK (Rache! Don't read the unedited comment notif!)
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The next two in the series, Murder of Angels and Daughter of Hounds, fizzle badly (especially the latter one) and with depressing predictability I don't like her more recent books that have been praised to the skies (Red Tree, Drowning Girl). But Threshold and Low Red Moon were quite good - urban fantasy, but in the deep South, with lots of local colour and detail, and a kind of Lovecraftian ethos.
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I dunno what happened after T and LRM - Murder of Angels was iffy, but Daughter of Hounds was just a hot mess, despite some good characterization. I'd probably rank her books thusly:
1 - Threshold
2 - Low Red Moon
3 - Silk
4 - Murder of Angels
5 - Daughter of Hounds
6 - The Drowning Girl
7 - The Red Tree
Bear in mind that probably everyone else who has reviewed her ever has the exact opposite of this ranking, I bet. At least from what I've seen a lot of genre critics raved about the last two. But they were just really chilly and off-putting for me.