REVIEW: Some Kind of Magic by R. Cooper

Some Kind of Magic by R. Cooper
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Plot

One short, easily-solved mystery to introduce us to Fairies. A second long, but also easily-solved mystery to give us the climax. Then a really long flashback of how Cal and Ray met and the big misunderstanding that led up to the beginning of the story. In short, the plot was convoluted.

The writing was bad because it felt like I had to climb into the author's head to know what was going on. There were numerous, random flashblacks that took me a few minutes to realize they were flashbacks. The sentence structures were just awkward and presented themselves as incomplete thoughts.

For a mystery story, it was 10% mystery (and not that good of a mystery) and 90% of "want Cal but can't have Cal due to racist misunderstanding about Fairies" angst. There was very little investigating going on.

The Characters

Ray was supposed to be this tough and intimidating werewolf police detective. It was bit a unbelievable that he had a hard time asking Audrey about Fairies culture. It was more unbelievable that it took him a long time before he even asked Audrey. And for a werewolf, he should have known better than to hold racist belief about another species, or Beings as they are called in the book. I couldn't give him leniency for this because as detective it's important to separate fact from fiction. Otherwise, it's hard to solve cases when people think all Werewolves are savages and all Fairies are just sluts.

I really like Penelope but she was never fully developed as a support character. For one thing, what kind of Being was she? I think she was supposed to be a mermaid or naiad. She seems to pop in and out of the story for Cal's convenience rather than for actual investigation.

The author should have known better to name Cal and his father Calvin. From what I understand, Cal is short for Calvin so effectively both father and son had the same name. Unless there's a huge reason why they had the same name, this was a big faux pas on the author's part.

Cal was kinda annoying how he keeps sucking on lollipop and munching on candies after candies. I get Fairies like sweet, but I didn't get a reason of why they do. It's no wonder that the police had a hard time taking Cal as as serious police consultant if he's acting like a little kid.

The World Building

There were more telling than showing to be honest. Even then, readers never understand why Beings came out to the humans, why Cal is a lone-wolf, why Beings are needed as police, why zombies are possible but not vampires. Then there's the Fairies, why do they have wings when it seems like they didn't use it to fly and why do they shed glitter and sparkle like skin cells.

Moreover, why did it take the author a long time to say demons were real or the police characters to realize a demon could have been one of their suspects.

Conclusion

Pretty much the only thing the book had going was its beautiful book cover. 2 stars for it-was-ok. FYI, I rated this on the scale of mainstream Urban Fantasy books.