The Enchantment Emporium

After Tanya Huff was the guest this year at both Lunacon and Balticon, I felt like it was time for me to give one of her books outside the linked Vicki Nelson/Henry Fitzroy/Tony Foster series a shot.  I'd tried this once before and bounced hard off one of her early fantasy novels, so I was somewhat afraid that this was a similar situation to my feelings about Lynn Flewelling, where I really, really like one series and just can't find the magic anywhere else.

I was relieved to find that The Enchantment Emporium (DAW Books, 2009; no editor listed) was actually pretty good.  It's an urban fantasy romance (my newly-invented term for paranormal-ish romances that would work just fine as urban fantasy even if the romance was removed) with a lot of humor and an original spin on the magic.

Alysha (Allie) Gale is a member of the magically-endowed Gale family -- no Dorothys among them -- which consists of hordes of women (the meddlesome senior Aunties and Allie's generation of cousins) who bake magical pies, always have good luck, and intermarry with their rare male cousins whose powers are more mysterious.  There's a loosely pagan motif, with the senior male relative becoming a Horned God figure and religio-magical rituals tied to May Day.  The Gales are also a model of open sexuality -- polyamory isn't quite the right word -- with the Gales hopping in and out of bed with each other both as part of the ritual magic and for casual affection, though there's sufficient incest taboo that brother-sister and intergenerational sex (within the family, anyway) aren't part of the scheme.  Marriages to outside men do take place, but without the family magic, they are always somewhat separate from the clan.

Allie has just lost her outside job and moved back to the clan's Ontario homestead, still suffering from a hopeless crush on her best friend, Michael, who has moved to Vancouver with his lover, Brian.  So when she is surprised by a letter making her heir to her eccentric grandmother's antique/junk shop in Calgary, she's free to make the move.  Needless to say, the junk in the shop includes all sorts of magical goods and the clientele is distinctly non-human.

Unfortunately, Allie is not the only powerfully magic being living in Calgary.  Dragons, gated through from another dimension, are overflying the city, and a sorcerer is at work.  Gales and sorcerers (always evil, corrupted by power) do not get along, to put it mildly; Gales make it a mission to destroy them.  So with the help of an unusually tall leprechaun, Joe O'Hallan ("You started it with the cultural stereotypes") and her vagabond cousin Charlie, the only Gale woman who doesn't bake, Allie is soon involved with trying to protect her adopted city.  The romance comes in via handsome tabloid reporter Graham Buchanan, who is professionally interested in the weirdness of the junk shop and soon very personally interested in Allie.  Family politics, licentious Dragon Lords, assassination attempts, yo-yos, and an endless stream of magical pies all add up to a clever tale with ample humor leavening the darker elements and everything neatly tied together by the conclusion.

I'm not nearly as gaga over The Enchantment Emporium as I am over the Vicki/Henry/Tony books, but it's a fun story and a great example of incorporating romance into urban fantasy without letting it weigh down the storytelling or dominate the plot.  It's not a purely comic novel, but it's full of well-integrated humor.  I look forward to rereading it to better appreciate the carefully-planned setup that I only noted in retrospect on my first read. 

I highly recommend it to anyone to whom a combination of urban fantasy, humor, and romance appeals.

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Comments

[Mary Aileen]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Huff's military SF is great fun, too, if that's your thing at all.

[Susan de Guardiola]

I have one of her milSF books on loan from a friend. Haven't managed to get into it, though I haven't quite bounced off it, either.

[Serge]

For milSF, I cannot recommend too much Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet".

[Neil W]

For milSF, I cannot recommend too much Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet".

I ought to, but have failed to recommend it for the past two months during which my review of the Lost Fleet Sextology has sat in drafts.