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Product Details
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Product Description
Product Description
First in a brand-new urban fantasy series from the author of The Blood Books
The Gale family can change the world with the charms they cast, and they like to keep this in the family. Alysha Gale is tired of having all her aunts try to run her life, both personally and magically. So when the letter from her Gran arrives willing her a "junk" shop in Calgary, Alysha jumps at the chance. It isn't until she gets there that she realizes her customers are fey. And no one told her there's trouble brewing in Calgary-trouble so big that even calling in the family may not save the day...
About the Author
Although she left Nova Scotia at three, and has lived most of her life since in Ontario, Tanya Huff still considers herself a Maritimer. On the way to the idyllic rural existence she shares with her partner Fiona Patton, six cats, and a Chihuahua, she acquired a degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson Polytechnic—an education she was happy to finally use while writing her recent Smoke novels. Of her previous twenty-three books, the five—Blood Price, Blood Trail, Blood Lines, Blood Pact, Blood Debt—featuring Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry VIII, romance writer, and vampire are among the most popular.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An absorbing story, intriguing characters, well written,
By
This review is from: The Enchantment Emporium (Mass Market Paperback)
This book is like an English trife; covered with rich whipped cream, layered with fresh fruit, thick vanilla pudding, raspberry jam and pound cake soaked generously in sherry and chilled until every flavour blends,yet leaving the textures distinct. It's delicious, a lovely book.
When I read the first thirty pages I was slightly dismayed with multiple characters doing bizarre things without logic or connection... men wearing antlers, multiple couplings, people popping in and out of interdimensional shrubbery, unpleasant aunts and lots and lots of baked goods. I even put it away for a week, but once I picked it up again I could not put it down. All the characters connected, the story revealed itself and then there were dragons and I was hooked. (There is nothing like a sexy dragon to lock me into a story.) Half way through I started checking to see how much more of the book was left to read; I didn't want it to end. And when it did, I went back and reread those first thirty pages and they all fell into place. This is not a book with neat endings and tidy resolutions. The author leaves unanswered questions and a certain sadness at the conclusion. Not everyone necessarily lives happily ever after but perhaps they do. Or perhaps they live they way they were meant to after all, and that can be a comfort. Tanya Huff is such a fine writer and this book is a keeper!
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I loved it!,
By
This review is from: The Enchantment Emporium (Mass Market Paperback)
I really enjoyed this book from Tanya, though it's quite a change of pace from her others. What can I say, I love dragon stories - and the dragons in this each seemed like a real person with different personalities and stories of their own, not just as linked to the fully human and not so fully human characters. I loved having a book set in Winnipeg. I loved the very literary setting and feel (this book will appeal to Jasper Fjorde fans even though it is not silly). And I very much prefer stories that end properly and stand on their own, even though there will be more in that world, than stories which just seem like a set-up for books 2 and 3. I'll be buying all future books in this world, and I hope there is one soon.
This review is a Random Act of Publicity - see [...]
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (58 customer reviews) 39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gale family will blow you away.,
By Christa - Published on Amazon.com
Like Huff's 'Blood', 'Smoke' and 'Keeper' books, 'The Enchantment Emporium' is fast-paced urban fantasy peopled with believable characters and stuffed with pop references. It's also laugh-out-loud funny on nearly every page.
Alysha 'Allie' Gale comes from a old, large family whose women are witches who grow more powerful as they age, and whose men are also powerful, different and dangerous. Allie is at loose ends. She's worried about her brother, because he hasn't chosen what he wants to be and their meddling aunties are thinking about choosing for him. She's pining over a man she can't have because he's gay(though she could have changed his mind) and she's just lost her job. Then she gets a letter from her grandmother, who has left her shop and the mystery of what's become of her to Allie. What she finds is a junk shop frequented by the Fey, a snooping reporter with the bluest eyes she's ever seen, and Trouble with a capital 'T'. She wants to handle it on her own, but even with the help of a couple of cousins, her gay not-boyfriend and an overgrown leprechaun, Calgary, Alberta is the center of a coming storm, and all the might of the Gales will be needed to stop it. 28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"We don't force it; we just let things happen.",
By spiderorchid - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Enchantment Emporium (Hardcover)
As there are already some good summaries of the plot, I'll skip this and come right to the point.
"The Enchantment Emporium" is not "The Keepers Cronicles" or any other Huff book recycled. It's a great new novel with an original plot and an interesting cast of characters. Of course, if you've read a lot of Tanya Huff's books, you'll meet old aquaintances: her trademark sense of humour, her habbit of having characters quoting from popular culture to make a point (and the reader laugh), the fact that she enjoys writing about strong, independend women and makes fun of men. So what? That's normal for every author. It's called a writing style. About the things that don't get explained: I admit it, as a reader, you get hit over the head with the plot in the first sentence of the novel. A lot of things don't get explained explicitly. You have to figure them out yourself in the course of the narrative. I think it's fun, keeps the plot moving and helps the reader to get deeper into what's happening because you have to begin to think like the characters if you want to understand what they are, what their motivations are and why things happen. It's not the 'normal' approach to writing a fantasy novel, but in my opinion, it works and provides an exciting new perspective. "The Enchantment Emporium" is a funny, suspenseful book with loveable characters and wonderful descriptions (I just love the dragons!). There's humour, violence, sex, mythological creatures, yoyos, music and lots of baking. Highly recommended! 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Get ready for a lot of repetitions of the name Gale,
By Rebecca L. Tushnet - Published on Amazon.com
I've had the full range of reactions to Huff's books, from deep enjoyment to horrified revulsion. I really wanted to like this book, if only because most of the bad reviews I read were turned off by the occasional F-bomb and the copious sex between cousins (not considered incest in many cultures, including the protagonist's!). Also, I don't mind having to figure out the world's rules as I go along, nor do I mind infodumps, which this book somehow managed to combine. However, smug essentialism trumped casual acceptance of sexuality, both het and gay, and because the essentialism was reduced to a tic I couldn't ignore it for more than a page at a time. Sigh.
Um, summary: Allie Gale, member of a powerful family of witches that always gets what it wants and can make anything happen via charms (sometimes sent in pies), including getting you a phone that always works and never costs any money, inherits her grandmother's curio shop in Calgary, away from the "aunties," and goes there to investigate what happened to her grandmother. Cue leprechauns, sex with a mysterious stranger who has a hidden agenda, sorcerors, and dragons. I cannot begin to express how annoyed I was at the repeated (seriously, about once a page) trope "Gale girls X" where X is some blanket statement, mostly about taking care of the people they cared about or getting what they wanted--with the occasional variation for "Gale boys Y" where Y is about having sex, choosing which Gale girl they wanted to mate with, or going power-crazy in the way that the most powerful Gale boys always do. When Gale girls get old enough, they become "aunties," powerful and meddling with each other. Though Allie and her cousin Charlie rebel cute against the aunties, it's just that they don't want to do what they're told; they have no compunctions about running roughshod over other people if *they're* the ones making the Gale decisions. Gale girls get what they want, and that includes getting public services and plane tickets whenever they want them. I guess whoever was going to get them in the ordinary course of events is just out of luck. Non-Gales are pets, including the man Allie was formerly in unrequited love with, who seems to have been modeled on Jared Padalecki physically. Look, I don't care if your characters have lots of sex between cousins and I'm all for women who get more powerful with age, but I have a real problem with being expected to enjoy a family (and it's clear that free will is not in effect and that these habits just breed true, like magic and grey eyes) that simply doesn't regard other people as worth consideration unless some Gale decides that those non-Gales are specifically and individually worth taking under the Gale wing. Perhaps all the Gale-ing was supposed to be cutesy, but I found it not just creepy but actively offensive. |
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