Review: Better Title Than Book
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2013
The prolog to _First Destroy All Giant Monsters_ establishes that someyears ago, a group of witches on a tour of England get rained in on a dayplanned for an expedition to Stonehenge and while spending the time attheir bed & breakfast shooting the breeze and playing pinochle come upwith a scheme to organize the scientific study of magic.  "Does thegraveyard dirt of a hanged man *really* have to come from beneath thecasket to be effective?  Do we really have to cast certain spells nudeeven when it's freezing outside?"We never find the answer to these questions as none of these charactersare ever heard from again after the prolog, except in abenstia.  The mainstory shifts focus to Amber Kemp, niece of one of the prolog witches,and a witch herself though she is currently not practising.In fact Amber is a computer programmer, and after a disasterous Thanksgivingdinner where she fell out with both sides of her family has more or lessturned her back on both the active witching of her Aunt's family and thepure science and teaching of her Father's family.  So far it's not workingout particularly well for her, as she was just canned from her jobduring a round of downsizing and is alone in the big city without anincome or reasonable prospects to get one.So she's not in a good mood when one of her dwarven cousins comes torecruit her back into the family magic business.  She *will* make it onher own and she *will not* accept family charity.  It takes the revelationthat her witch aunt (from the prolong) has vanished along with her husbandto get her to (relutcantly) accept being dragooned back into the familybusiness.The family seat is a semi-sentient house and estate called Five Corners.The library seems to be setting out an agenda for Amber by dumping a bookcalled _First Destroy All Giant Monsters_ from the shelves where it can'tbut attract attention.  Taking this as a clue that giant monsters areinvolved in her aunt's disappearance, and knowing that the book was arecent purchase of her aunt, Amber goes to the local bookstore from whichher aunt ordered to book to try and find out what other books she had boughtrecently.  Unfortunately as soon as she steps into the store, she suffersa devasting magical attack and the main plot kicks in..That is, inasmuch as there is one.I'm afraid this book is a rather shaky series start.  While I can't helpbut admire the title, the book doesn't really live up to it.  As the flavorof my summary above may convey, the basic plot is a bit meandering.First of all, the mystery that provides the initial impetus, themystery of the missing Aunt, kind of gets lost along the way.  Ambermakes no progress finding her, and the magical problem she spendsmost of the book dealing with turns out to be completely unrelatedto the disappearance.  Even the cousins who bring Amber into itdon't seem too concerned with the Aunt by the end of the book.Second, Amber running into the bookstore and becoming involved withthe owner and his magically caused troubles is completely random.If the "giant monsters" book clue has nothing to do with her aunt,then the house seems to be acting arbitrarily, especialy since itdoesn't seem to especialy like the bookstore owner, at least atfirst, anyway.Third, for someone who's established as supposedly a pretty smart cookie,Amber seems very dense as far as getting to the root of the bookstore guy'sproblems.  I kind of wanted to shake her and say, "Hey.  This guy hasapparently been cursed, and hates magic.  Don't you think maybe you shouldask him if he's ticked off any witches, and where did he run across magicbefore anyway?"Speaking of the cursed guy -- I understand he's hostile and offputting becausethe curse makes him shy away from possible help, or from even thinking aboutwhat has happened to him logically, but his ongoing hostility makes it hardto understand what Amber sees in him, and why she is falling for him.The choice of making the curse an enervating one works against the book too.Both main characters spend the majority of the time dead on their feet, andit just gets tiring to read about them being so tired.SPOILER OF SORTSAnd did I mention that there is no giant monster?Anyway, while it wasn't an awful book, I'm not sure I cared enough abouteither protagonist to continue with the series.