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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gale family will blow you away., June 6, 2009
Like Huff's 'Blood', 'Smoke' and 'Keeper' books, 'The Enchantment Emporium' is fast-paced urban fantasy peopled with believable characters and stuffed with pop references. It's also laugh-out-loud funny on nearly every page.
Alysha 'Allie' Gale comes from a old, large family whose women are witches who grow more powerful as they age, and whose men are also powerful, different and dangerous. Allie is at loose ends. She's worried about her brother, because he hasn't chosen what he wants to be and their meddling aunties are thinking about choosing for him. She's pining over a man she can't have because he's gay(though she could have changed his mind) and she's just lost her job.
Then she gets a letter from her grandmother, who has left her shop and the mystery of what's become of her to Allie. What she finds is a junk shop frequented by the Fey, a snooping reporter with the bluest eyes she's ever seen, and Trouble with a capital 'T'.
She wants to handle it on her own, but even with the help of a couple of cousins, her gay not-boyfriend and an overgrown leprechaun, Calgary, Alberta is the center of a coming storm, and all the might of the Gales will be needed to stop it.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent fantasy, June 5, 2009
I enjoy urban fantasy, and this novel is a fine addition to my bookshelf! In it we meet Alysha, a young woman who has just been laid off from her job, who has a rather unusual family. As we meet "the aunties," who seem so kindly at first, we soon realize that there is an unexplained source of power available to this family. And a propensity to growing stag horns among some of the men...
As Alysha heads west to Calgary to take over an Enchantment Emporium left to her by her grandmother, we meet a wonderful cast of characters. If I say too much about them, I'll create a spoiler, and I don't want to do that. Suffice it to say that battlelines are being drawn, and we will discover more about Alysha's family!
I do hope to read more of these charmingly written fantasies!
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We don't force it; we just let things happen.", June 12, 2009
As there are already some good summaries of the plot, I'll skip this and come right to the point.
"The Enchantment Emporium" is not "The Keepers Cronicles" or any other Huff book recycled. It's a great new novel with an original plot and an interesting cast of characters.
Of course, if you've read a lot of Tanya Huff's books, you'll meet old aquaintances: her trademark sense of humour, her habbit of having characters quoting from popular culture to make a point (and the reader laugh), the fact that she enjoys writing about strong, independend women and makes fun of men. So what? That's normal for every author. It's called a writing style.
About the things that don't get explained: I admit it, as a reader, you get hit over the head with the plot in the first sentence of the novel. A lot of things don't get explained explicitly. You have to figure them out yourself in the course of the narrative. I think it's fun, keeps the plot moving and helps the reader to get deeper into what's happening because you have to begin to think like the characters if you want to understand what they are, what their motivations are and why things happen. It's not the 'normal' approach to writing a fantasy novel, but in my opinion, it works and provides an exciting new perspective.
"The Enchantment Emporium" is a funny, suspenseful book with loveable characters and wonderful descriptions (I just love the dragons!). There's humour, violence, sex, mythological creatures, yoyos, music and lots of baking.
Highly recommended!
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