Review: A solid fantasy series for the somewhat over-educated
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 29, 2013
So the only downside to this series, which focuses on a pair of technically-bisexual lesbians exploring their sexuality over the course of eight or nine books and a couple dozen varied fantasy scenarios... is all the sex.That's right, I said it.Teasdale is an excellent writer with real experience in higher education that writes an intricate, complex setting that feels as real as our own and uses it to launch an adventure story of personal growth and awesome action that cannot be fully described until someone invents an urban-fantasy equivalent term for "swashbuckling".  Were there any buckles in here, they would be swashed, and no metaphorical chandelier-bearing rope goes unswung.  And between the various increments of awesome there is a fantasy analogue of high-energy physics of all things that could almost be a legit academic lecture series if it weren't imaginary, fit together in a way that, weirdly, makes sense in actual real-world physics plus or minus a particle or two and half an exponent that makes most ostensible "hard sci-fi" stories go crying home to mum.But apparently, the draw was _supposed_ to be the bondage-based bisexual love heptocahedron, and I'm something like 60% sure the author hadn't actually experienced sex in person until maybe book 5 or so, when it finally occurred to the narrative that no one is getting titillated by simply naming articles of clothing or giving us the Robert Jordan treatment of implied/explicit sexuality.The big redeeming quality of this series, though, and the reason you're seeing 4 stars and not 3, is that, just when you're chanting to yourself "enough with the Laurell K. Hamilton impression, we get it, you'll have sex with literally anything and we're supposed to approve and whatever, now focus on the 'I'm a living fantasy nuke' aspect for a bit"... it does.  There is literally a point where the protagonist says, almost word for word, "Am I a slut?  Eh, whatever, enough of this weird obsession with my sex life, time to blow some things up" and she goes off on a tear that completely ignores the smut-book advertising angle for a book and a half or so.  It's sort of like if you wrapped an Honor Harrington novel in a paperback copy of Twilight, and then at the end the Nike breaks free of the web of depressing tween romance, blasts the entire Pacific northwest to smithereens with a planet-buster, and then spends another hundred pages shelling the fortifications of every character but Ella's dad, who is busy being proud of his family over a beer on the command deck.Don't pretend you didn't get any of those references, you've already slipped off the urban fantasy peak (Jim Butcher) and are considering buying a UF book sold by slapping pictures of scantily-clad '90s CGI women on the cover.My point is, if you're down to UF novels sold by slapping poorly-rendered CGI pinups on the cover, go with this one, it's the best of that particular subgenre, more or less.