Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I gave this a solid attempt, but it didn’t grab me by the end of Part 1 so I am dropping it. The synopsis sounded so promising: Victorians, arts, demons, sisters divided…
But the story really doesn’t deliver. For some reason, the author not only thought The Portrait Of Dorian Gray needed a modern update, she 1) boldly declared as much in a prologue and 2) outright named one of the characters “Dorina Gray.”
Gag me. Derivative much?
But I was still enticed by the promised demons and sisterly rivalry, so I pressed on. We have two sisters, the somber elder who loves fencing to the detriment of all other things, and the younger, Dorina, who is vapid and “bravely” gay and into art even though she has never seen it in person. But the elder sister has almost no personality. She has literally no interests or conversation aside from fencing. And, of course, she is charmingly self-taught. (Eyeroll)
It makes her boring. She has no interest in anything else at all? None?
The other major character is Lady Henrietta/Henry, who has a demon that makes her love art but she wears pants and is also gay and blah blah blah. She’s a lot of stereotypes of the woman who doesn’t give a damn, and is so obviously the author’s cat’s-paw that you may as well have called her Deus Ex Machina.
I gave up. Sorry, readers.
M.E. Kinkade 