Customer Reviews

The Wild Ways

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tanya Huff does not disappoint her fans, new or old, with her latest Gale family offering, The Wild Ways. Huff's earlier Gale family work The Enchantment Emporium told the story of Allie Gale (Alysha Catherine) who inherits an antique emporium/junk store from her grandmother (Auntie Catherine) in far from home Calgary Canada. Allie with the help of a friend Michael, her cousins Charlie & Roland, her brother David, the "Aunties", a leprechaun named Joe and a sorcerer's assassin Graham who is the 7th son of a 7th son save Calgary & possibly the world from the Dragon Queen & rescues Jack, the teenage son of a sorcerer and said Dragon Queen (the sorcerer doesn't fare as well.).

The events in The Wild Ways follow about six months or so after the Enchantment Emporium ends. Jack who is now living with Allie & her partner is bored as only a 14 year old half dragon prince/half Gale Boy teenager can be. He isn't the only one. Charlie (Charlotte Marie) Gale, who as a Wild Gale cousin can not be held down to a place, is also bored with her country music band and her life in general. By various means Jack & Charlie end up on the other end of Canada in Halifax participating in the Celtic music festival scene & getting involved on the side of a "save the seals" environmentalist group who are protesting an offshore shallow water drilling project. It goes without saying I hope that Selkies, Goblins, Trolls and other fey creatures are integral to the plot ;-).

I was afraid at the debut that Huff would sacrifice the story & characters for some heavy handed political/environmental message but I had no reason to fear. While Amelia Carlson was clearly the ugly corporate antagonist in the story (owner of Carlson Oil and willing to use unethical means to get her oil well drilling permits), Huff makes it clear through Charlie's clear-eyed gaze that the Selkies aren't above manipulating humans for their own selfish ends and that environmental success comes at the expense of increased human suffering (unemployment & the resulting poverty) for the locals that the Selkies really couldn't care less about. The ultimate puppet master is Auntie Catherine (who wasn't dead after all) who goes mano a mano (sort of) with Charlie at the end in support of the oil drilling effort and the unexpected hero of the story is Jack (maybe not such a surprise if you are paying attention).

Bravo Tanya Huff.

May I add, that it is a pleasure to read such a superb fantasy novel (well written & great story) compared with all the ... ahem... *stuff* that Amazon is pushing at me these days with 5 star reviews no less! Some writers, editors & publishers are obviously getting all their relatives & friends on board to lie for them when writing those reviews. Tanya Huff needs none of that, the quality of her work stands on its own.

As The Enchantment Emporium is one of my favourite Tanya Huff books (and trying to pick one is rather like deciding which dark chocolate truffle you like best) I was really looking forward to the next book in this series coming out, and I was not disappointed. This story focuses on Charlie, a character from the first novel and her adventures with Dragons, Oil Companies and Selkies, Oh My!

Besides humans, the world contains several paranormal species like vampires, goblins, pixies, and hoberts, etc. however on top of the food chain are the Gales. They look human, but are not human and they possess the power to topple empires. The most powerful Gale is Charlotte, but "Charlie" as she is called prefers playing her guitar with her road touring band.

Charlie loves music but also uses music to focus her power, which explains why several other bands want her to join their group. Nobody is as surprised as she is when she helps the Selkies who had their pelts stolen by her Auntie Catherine who was hired by an oil company. Assisting her is fourteen year old Jack who is a Gale Draconian Prince and sorcerer. The person who wanted to control the Selkie is Amelia Carlson who wants to control the selkies as they belong to an environmental group Two Seventy Five N that presses government to deny off shore drilling permits to Amelia's company. Charlie and Jack search for the stolen pelts, try to prevent the drilling, and prepare for battle against a powerful family member.

The latest Gales urban fantasy (see THE ENCHANTMENT EMPORIUM) is wonderful thriller due to the strong cast who make selkie and Gales seem genuine. The story line is fast-paced but character driven as the aunt and niece are on different sides of the drill baby drill controversy; which anchors the plot in a real contemporary debate. Readers will appreciate Tanya Huff, known for her military science fiction, as The Wild Ways is a terrific read, one of the best urban fantasies I have read in years.

Harriet Klausner

Sorry, Charlie - you're just not that interesting. You'd think that any character with the ability to walk the wild woods ... well, you'd think this character would be extremely interesting, right? Wrong. Charlie is meant to be interesting, but she and the story are dull, dull, dull. It takes way too long to get going, then you're not sure which direction it's going in (the new dragon cousin, Allie's new Gale 'coven', the selkies, etc., etc.). No, they don't all tie together very well by the end, unlike the Enchantment Emporium, which was a far better book with loads more excitement.

And the music isn't woven into the story in very interesting ways. That should have been really magical, but it turned out to just be ... dull. Don't get me wrong - I really like Tanya Huff, but this wasn't her best effort. I'd rather go back to Allie and her struggles in Calgary.

As a sequel to The Enchantment Emporium, this book was almost perfect. It brought back the same characters, but then went off and had us reading something else. This time, the story was centered around Charlotte "Charlie" Gale and her cousin Jack. Actually, the best parts of the story were about Jack.

Being a teenage boy surrounded by way too many women of all ages can seriously cramp a guy's style, you know. So Charlie grabs Jack out from under the Calgary-based smothering and takes him touring Nova Scotia with her Celtic band instead. One of the band members's girlfriends happens to be a selkie whose sealskin has been stolen... by Aunt Catherine Gale. Auntie Catherine is working for an oil company that wants drilling permits in a seal sanctuary. We can all do very quick math here. As we learned from Allie in the first book, the younger Gale girls are growing up, and up for the challenge.

Like The Enchantment Emporium, The Wild Ways is an easy read with plenty of laughs. It's not a kids book, though. There is a lot of implied sex, and it is often happily heteroflexible. However, if you let your kid (of whatever age) read the first one, then you should be fine with this one unless you've developed an allergy to gay fiddlers.

I really liked The Enchantment Emporium a lot. The Gale Aunties are a unique contribution to the urban fantasy genre. They're funny, powerful, meddling, and pretty scary when you pause to think about it. I love that Huff just presents them as they are, without making moral judgments about what they do or how they do it.

The Enchantment Emporium was a difficult book to get started because Huff just tosses you into the deep end and you have to do a lot of treading water to get caught up and understand her world building and what's going on. The advantage of reading the sequel is that you already did the hard work with the first book and know what you need to know, so can strap in for the ride right from the start.

In the Wild Ways the main character is Charlie, who was a secondary character in the first book. I actually think she's a more interesting character and that probably has quite a bit to do with why I liked this one even better than the first book.

The Wild Ways is fast-paced, and I tore through it in no time. There are a lot of things going on in the book, yet it never drags or seems like there's any extra fluff. All of the mythical creatures are interesting and fit nicely into the plot, and I really enjoyed how traditional music was also woven into the story. It was great to finally understand more about what Charlie being Wild really means, and of course there was plenty of Huff's trademark humor to keep me laughing out loud as I read.

The Wild Ways can be read as a stand alone novel, especially considering that The Enchantment Emporium was pretty confusing at its start and I enjoyed reading it anyway. But I still recommend reading them in order to get the most out of the experience and avoid unneeded confusion.

Basically, I can't find anything negative to say about The Wild Ways, nothing that I felt was a weakness, thus the five star rating.

KINDLE NOTE: The Kindle ebook edition isn't perfect. There are some formatting flaws scattered throughout, like spaces added between the end of dialogue and the quote mark and other things of that nature that are unfortunately more common in ebooks than they should be. Especially when paying new release prices. But they weren't bad enough to slow me down or do more than occasionally irritate.

This series is rather different from most of the UF/PNR out there. It feels more like the style of Charles de Lint than Richelle Mead or Kelley Armstrong. Huff plays with legends much older than werewolves or vampires, with the Gale family at the center of everything. I actually really like the world of these books; the Gales are powerful in interesting and unusual ways.

Where the first book, Enchantment Emporium, focused on Allie Gale and her role, The Wild Ways follows Allie's cousins Charlie, a Wild Power, and Jack, a dragon prince. They're both great characters: neither really fits into the mold for Gale women or men, so this book is about each of them learning their place in the world. They're also funny and work really well together, and since (unlike Allie) neither of them really got a love story, I hope we'll see more of them in the next book.

In this book, Charlie investigates the theft of selkie skins. Gales aren't supposed to involve themselves in anything that doesn't directly concern the family, but she's never been very good at following the rules. This story was good, if not particularly intricate. There were a few moments where the direction of the plot just seemed sort of...random. But the appeal of these books isn't in the plot, it's in the world and characters anyway. However, there were several times in the book where I was on the edge of my seat, and there are a few questions I still want answers to after finishing the book.

"The Wild Ways" by Tanya Huff continues the tale of Charlotte (Charlie) Gale, one of the rare Wild Powers in the Gale family. Charlie has adjusted from the events that occurred in "The Enchantment Emporium" and continues to do as she pleases, despite the input from the Aunties in the family who have their own plans for her. She agrees to participate in a Celtic music festival as events seem to coalesce to involve her in the struggles that a group of selkies are having with a major oil company that wants to drill in the North Atlantic, perilously close to a seal sanctuary. Added to the already precarious balance of power in the Gale family of witches, Jack, the fourteen year old Dragon Prince sorcerer, is approaching the age where `something' will have to be done about him and there is a strong suspicion that he will share the fate of most of the Gale boys. The Gale family traditionally does not meddle in the affairs of the Fey but Charlie's discovery that one of the aunties is intimately involved in coercing the selkies to support the oil company's plans leads her to actively oppose her Wild Auntie. It's going to take some creative solutions to counteract all of the measures that have been taken but fortunately thinking outside of the box is Charlie's specialty.

Another wild ride with the Gale family, filled with snarky repartee, wonderfully current asides and plenty of sexual innuendo. The author's lyrical writing is deceptively understated but provides plenty of atmospheric background with an excellent economy of words. The marked contrast between the mores of the non-humans and humans is vividly described in such a reasonable manner that one almost forgets the carnage being wreaked upon individuals as the two worlds collide. The fascinating characters who are part of the Gale family continue to add spice to a story that gives a new twist to a traditional tale that pits environmentalists against corporate greed. Charlie continues to demonstrate that she is a force to be reckoned with, Wild power notwithstanding, if only she can learn to harness her resources. Another enjoyable addition to the saga of the Gale family.

© Night Owl Reviews

The sequel to The Enchantment Emporium is one of a number of excellent contemporary fantasy stories that have been published recently. This is the story of Charlotte 'Charlie' Gale; cousin to Alyshia 'Allie' Gale the heroine of The Enchantment Emporium. It takes up a few months after the events of The Enchantment Emporium. The worldly players are indeed contemporary. They include a Canadian oil company, its driven to prove herself female CEO, corporate functionaries, environmentalists, politicians, rednecks and musicians. The unworldly players include dragons, brownies, selkies, goblins, boggarts, a troll, one of the Ancient Gods and the Gale clan. The action moves from Calgary to the Maritime provinces. It includes musical competitions, industrial espionage, two coming of age stories, romance and a lot of adventure. From a less deft hand, the oil - environmentalist combination could have been moralistic, politically correct and preachy. In Huff's skilled hands, it is one flavor in a mighty tasty stew. All these ingredients blend together to provide an interesting, tasty meal for the reader. It's complete within itself and does not rely on references back to The Enchantment Emporium. Yet familiarity with The Enchantment Emporium is helpful. It's fun to read. Highly recommended.