Review: Interesting mix - Magic fantasy romance with an Old West feel
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 16, 2011
Dark Vow had a really great but sad hook. Jaines, who is apprentice to her blacksmith husband, ignores his rule to never serve an Arcane customer and the gun she works on and the bullets she makes for it are later used to kill her husband. Grief and guilt move Jaines to vow to hunt down and kill the unkillable Arcane Hunter responsible.Dark Vow initially caught my interest because from the desciption it looked to be a steampunk novel, what it turned out to be instead was a first person story that was an interesting mix of fantasy 'romance' with magic in a world with an Old West feel. Husk's world building is really well done so this fusion really worked.Jaines story really falls into two parts, the story of what leads her to her quest for vengeance including the early part of her search for the killer, and the second part where she is aided in her hunt by a rogue Arcane, Obsidian, who defied the Arcane Guild and ended up 'spelled' so that if he uses his healing power, more and more of his body will turn to stone. I liked both parts of the story and really liked Obsidian and his very interesting backstory, and being a romantic, I wanted Jaines to end up with the intriguing outcast.However when looking at Dark Vows as the sum its parts,  the transition between the two pieces of the story are just too quick within the time frame of the story. Jaines loves her husband at the beginning and loves Obsidian at the end, but it just feels too soon given the extent of her initial grief and the short time since her husband's death. Husk does try to give Jaines the motivation for the transition: events unfold that make Jaines question whether her husband really loved her, but actually that doesn't really matter - what matters is what Jaines felt.Even with that one flaw, I still enjoyed Dark Vow, the ending leaves open the possibility for Husk to revisit this world and I wouldn't mind another journey there.Complimentary copy for review provided by Carina Press via Netgalley