Spellbent

I found Lucy A. Snyder's Spellbent in Chapters back before my Toronto trip. I took it with me and started it after I finished The Hob's Bargain. Unfortunately, I couldn't really get into it. I got 40 pages in, then stopped. A few weeks went by while I put off going back to it; I continued moving onto something else. Finally, a few days back, I decided to finish off Spellbent in the hopes it got better.

Spellbent is the story of the mage Jessie Shimmer and her ferret familiar Palimpsest on their quest to rescue her lover Cooper Marron from Hell. I have to say, I absolutely love the premise of the book; reading the back randomly in Chapters made me want to buy it and read it immediately.

Unfortunately, I've never really liked Jessie. I don't know what it is about her, but I just couldn't really connect with her. I absolutely loved her familiar, Pal. The fact that a giant spider-like creature is stuck in the body of a ferret was really awesome (and the idea that something would have to serve as a familiar for hundreds of years as punishment for some unknown crime is horrifying). I also liked some of the other characters, like the Warlock. But I never really liked the main character.

I also found the story a bit boring. While terrible things seemed to happen pretty quickly, it just never really held my attention. I'm not sure why this happened, but that was the way it was; I'm thinking it probably came down to Lucy Snyder's writing style.

So I was kind of disappointed with Spellbent. While I liked the overarching story, I wasn't really impressed with the specifics. I think I'm going to give her future books in this series a pass.