It had its moments, but I didn't like it enough to keep it. Pat Wrede's take on the Wild West (with magic, without steampunk) is much better. ([b:Thirteenth Child|5797595|Thirteenth Child (Frontier Magic, #1)|Patricia C. Wrede|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328840173s/5797595.jpg|5969561] & sequels) ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Suehyla El-Attar. I liked her pretty well. Her narration was easy to listen to and didn’t annoy me. I did think the voices she used for the male characters were difficult to distinguish between at times, but then there were quite a lot of male characters popping up for brief passages. The text made it pretty easy to realize who was talking anyway, and I was mostly just happy she didn’t voice them in a ridiculous-sounding way like some narrators do when trying to voice characters from the opposite sex.

Story
This is an alternate history fantasy set in the 1800’s. Witchcraft and sorcery have a relatively prominent role in society. The main character, Emily, is a witch from a small town in California where she’s struggling to make ends meet. She accidentally gets a dangerous magical rock embedded in her hand and she’s forced to turn to a warlock she dislikes for help. They set off on a trip to get help, but things get progressively more complicated.

This is a very romance-heavy story with the enemies-to-lovers trope. I should have hated it, but I actually enjoyed it pretty well. The setting was interesting and the story held my attention. The romance didn’t annoy me very much, because at least it wasn’t the sort where the character is constantly thinking, “Oh he/she is such a jerk. But look at his/her lips/butt/abs/arms/whatever. Swoon… Oh, maybe I should run from this big bad monster that’s about to attack me.” The relationship was developed more gradually, with none of the ridiculous obsessing at weird and inappropriate moments. The relationship developed from antagonistic, to somewhat respectful, to somewhat friendly, and so forth.

I did enjoy the first half more than the second half. By the second half, I started to get a little frustrated with all the people who were either insanely evil, or untrustworthy, or pursuing a hidden agenda, or some combination of those things. The romance also started to get a little more obnoxiously angsty. This was a good story for audio listening though, and another one of the ones where I wonder if I might not have actually enjoyed it more as an audio than I would have in print. It’s on the simpler side and I think that combined with all the romance would have annoyed me faster in print. I looked forward to having time to listen to more of the audiobook each day.

I’m rating this at 3.5 stars and rounding up to 4 on Goodreads. I’m marking this as a “maybe” for following up in the future. I wouldn’t mind reading (or possibly listening to) more, and there are a couple more books published, but it seems like the author stopped publishing books even though more were expected in the series. I might therefore just leave things where I am because the ending of the 1st book was pretty satisfying. Not all the threads had closure, and it did end with some hints about what the next book might involve, but the main plot was wrapped up well enough. ( )

Really liked this one... Had to take a break from work to finish it... I will definitely read more of the series. ( )

I liked the setting of the start of the book a lot better than when we finally get to New York. I love the idea of steampunk historical California, and wanted to know more about the old mining towns and the Indian villages (also, steampunk Dr. Quinn anyone?). I will probably download the next one from the library as well, but I wish we'd stayed in the west. ( )

A solid 3.5. The myth building was very interesting, but I found myself counting pages until the end about half way through. ( )