Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆
Subtitled “A grimdark fantasy,” if you are expecting this to be packed full of sex and violence, as a result… Well, you might be a little disappointed. While the lead character, Calixta Harlow Carlyle, is an “Exotic” – a highly-trained prostitute – she doesn’t seem to do all that much… um, prostiuting. We’re about half-way through before she goes to bed with anyone. The violence isn’t particularly brutal or copious either. It is, I guess, somewhat dark, and certainly not a young adult book. But anyone who watched (or read) Game of Thrones will not exactly require the services of a fainting couch to get through this.
Calixta ends up dying, trying to protect one of the girls in the brothel she runs. However, that’s just the start, because the powers that be in the afterlife inform our heroine she’s actually a Vanqusher. These are people with magical talents who act as guardians against the forces of evil, currently massing as they prepare to take over the world. Vanquishers are supposed to have guides from birth, who train them. But Calixta never had that benefit, instead being sold into slavery and trained as an Exotic. She’s sent back to life – much to the shock of her employees – and told to find the other three Vanquishers. But the evil Jadro wants to ensure Calixtra dies permanently, before she can come into her true abilities, and stand against him.
She’s forced into going on the run, with three friends who are even less suited to survival. This involves an escape through the sewers which is about the nastiest sequence in the book (straying uncomfortably close to fetish for my tastes), although they are then rescued by Dreyden, another Vanquisher. Together, they go on a quest to awaken another of their kind, Calixta learning how to control the battle-mage skills she has been given, which allow her to summon and manipulate the element of fire, both offensively and for protection. This talent is very much a work in progress, hence the lower score for action – Dreyden likely does more of the heavy lifting in that department. I suspect she may improve in future installments.
There are several points where the writing does come off as somewhat clunky, and points at which it feels like characters are saying things which are more needed for the plot than anything else. It did also feel that things were unfolding at a leisurely pace: this is approaching four hundred page long, and by the end, we’re not particularly far on from where we were. There’s a lot of travel. However, it is an interesting pantheon, with virtues like Justice, Wisdom and Hope taking human form under a deity they call “Father”. It has occasional moments of genuine emotion too, such as in regard to Calixta’s unborn child, which proved surprisingly poignant. I suspect it’ll end up being fairly straightforward good vs. evil, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Author: Omayra Vélez
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Vanquishers of Alhambra series.