Unfortunately cliche. I really wanted to like this series (I bought all 3 books), but could not even finish the first one. I LOVED Nancy A. Collins when I was a teenager. Her Sunglasses After Dark series is one of my favorite, but with how cliche this series reads, it makes me second guess the Sunglasses series and wonder if I was just too young to catch how cliche it was too? Or maybe Right Hand Magic is completely different from Sunglasses and Sunglasses IS as awesome as I remember it to be. Ahwell. Shelved this series for now. I don't hate it, but it's definitely not something I want to invest time in right now. 2.5 stars.This book felt heavily influenced by Harry Potter, but where the sense of ridiculousness worked in the latter (specifically the earlier books), it worked less so in this. Much of this is because in the early Harry Potter books, where both Harry is learning about the magical world around him, he's experiencing it from the perspective of an 11 year old, so chocolate frogs and fart flavoured jelly beans are fun and charming. Not so much when the main character is supposed to be jaded mid-20's Manhattan-ite artist who gushes at everything like she just fell off a turnip truck. And seriously, she's supposed to be an old money trust-fund baby, daughter of one of the richest men in the country, and she acts like she's just regular folk. Um no. I get it; we're supposed to like her because she's not stuck up, and she's nice and whatever. But seriously, even if you're an awesome person, you have a whole set of different ingrained behaviours if you come from the kind of money that Tate apparently comes from. I didn't get why there had to be so many mythological characters/creatures in Golgotham. There seemed to be some back story to explain the presence of the Kymerans (mentioned in passing as the Unholy Wars, but with no actual details of said wars), but why leprechauns?And as others have pointed out, I found the dialogue stilted and generally info-dumpy.
What do You think about Right Hand Magic (2010)?
A very different version of New York I would like to visit. Looking forward to the next instalment.
—Mariannarc
Loved it, great world building and characters you can like.
—clara
