I forgot everything about that boy, and now I'm out on parole, just a nobody witch volunteering at an animal rescue and keeping a low profile. Everything was fine until the notorious Crystal Druid showed up to hunt a powerful fae that's leaving a trail of dead bodies in its wake—bodies that the local ex-con, me, will be blamed for.
To save my own hide, I offer to help him. But with every clash of temper between us, something inside me cracks a little more. The closer we get to our target—and the closer I get to the guarded Crystal Druid—the more my missing memories loom.
The fae killer is far deadlier than I imagined—but so is the boy I forgot. And the only question now is which one will destroy me first.
I've been reading Annette Marie's Guild Codex series (plural) in suggested reading order. I am a major fan of her work. If you're not familiar, basically, there's a magical community (aka mythics) that exists just out of sight of the regular world. In the Spellbound series, we're introduced to it and to all things mythic through Tori Dawson, a recently-fired waitress who stumbles across a bartending job at the Crow and Hammer, a decent pub with colorful characters including 3 rather hot guys, Aaron Sinclair, Kai Yamata and Ezra Rowe. But being hot doesn't equal obnoxious and soon, the trio adopt her as the D'Artagnan to their Three Musketeers. Early on, we're introduced to the Ghost (aka Crystal Druid) when Aaron, Kai and Ezra rope Tori into trying to capture a quite infamous mythic with a rather high bounty on his head. But when the Ghost kidnaps/rescues Tori, she discovers that things aren't quite what they seem. (A couple books in, Marie expanded the world beyond the four's adventures to those of Kit Morris -- the Warped series -- and Robin Page -- the Demonized series. Kit works for the Mythic Police Department and Robin inadvertently becomes a demon mage to a rather unique demon. It's a great bunch of stories that I highly recommend.) And this leads me to The One and Only Crystal Druid, the first book of the Unveiled series.
While the Crystal Druid -- whose name is Zak Andrii -- is infamous, Tori discovers that although people have been kidnapped, it's always with their consent and always to help them. Even so, he's not a misunderstood marshmallow. He's earned his reputation legitimately: he extremely grouchy, taciturn and anti-social. He kills people and purchases dangerous artifacts. But what we (Tori) discover is that the people that Zak targets are always *bad* and he buys the artifacts to keep them out of bad peoples' clutches. Throughout the 3 preceding series, Zak is often on the periphery of events and as I started reading the Unveiled series, I was excited to finally have a Zak-centric series. I was a little disappointed. That's not a un-recommendation. It's just a 'warning' and an encouragement to keep with it.I definitely recommend not starting with this series, because I found it difficult to engage with at the beginning. In fact, I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars, because it's well written, interesting, and provides us with another facet of the mythic world that Marie's created. I'm just less enthusiastic with its execution and about how it starts the series.
The title of the book refers to one of Zak's nicknames -- the Crystal Druid -- but it's not his series. This series focuses on Saber, a low-level witch with a low-level fae, stuck in a coven that she doesn't like and who doesn't really like her. Zak is a main character, but it's not his story. It's Saber's story and how it intersects with Zak's life. From the beginning, it's obvious that Saber is a very angry woman, but as we get to know her, she evolves and it's revealed that she's not as bad as she continually describes herself as being. (Kinda a theme for both her and Zak.) Saber's been stuck with the coven as part of her parole after doing time for killing a mundane. (Again, it sounds bad -- but that's only because Saber can't remember the murder she knows she committed, and therefore, we don't know that it was something justified rather than something to be reviled.)
As I mentioned, I'm less enthusiastic about how it starts the series. It's a departure from the other series in that it's much darker in tone. Plus, one of the main elements of the story -- the b-plot surrounding an abused unnamed girl and unnamed boy, who are plotting to kill their abusers. But unlike most prologues, we're not given any context for who these 2 characters are. Context doesn't come until about 9/10ths of the way through the book. By the time it finally becomes clear who the girl and boy are (Saber and Zak), I found myself really annoyed when the story would skip to their plot line. Not only did it interrupt the action and the flow of the story, but I also had no connection with these 2 nameless characters. (In fact, remaining nameless is integral to their interactions.) If it had been clear much earlier in the story, I might have been more emotionally invested, but with how it's written, it was really hard for me to engage or care.
After the prologue, we meet Saber. Early on in the story, Saber enter her coven leader's office to find the woman dead. Even though Saber is barely in the room long enough to recover from the shock of discovering a dead body, the woman's daughter, Laney, accuses Saber of the woman's murder. Because she's got a record and the MPD won't be lenient with a repeat offender, Saber runs. (Laney's dogged insistence over Saber's guilt was a little annoying. I mean, there's a really strong urine smell in the room when they discover the body, which isn't possible in the time that Saber was in the room alone. But Laney constantly, dramatically declares that Saber murdered! her! mother!) While this inciting incident sets off the main action of the book, it didn't really help me to build any real affection for the story's focus (Saber).
Honestly, I found it hard to like Saber. She is angry... and angry... and angry. She uses harsh words to describe her 'real' self. Her emotions are all over the place. She's quick to threaten violence. She carries around a switchblade that she's not afraid to use. These things in themselves do not turn me off a character, but there's such an imbalance that we're never really given anything to like about her. The only really likable things about her are that she's passionate about rescuing animals, taking care of those animals, and she's liked by her really sweet familiar. (Unlike the narrator of Naomi Novik's Scholomance series -- who is also really angry and can't be bothered with most people -- I wasn't really won over to root for Saber, as much as I was inclined to like her.)
While I was predisposed to like Zak because of the other series, Zak as part of this series left me a little cold. The dynamic between Saber and Zak isn't even really engaging. Again, it's that disconnect between the emotional stakes and the characters that works against things. Marie tries to create enemies-to-lovers tension, but it really falls flat. In fact, when Zak suddenly plants a kiss on Saber and there's some hot and heavy petting, I rolled my eyes. (It felt very forced upon them by the author.) I think it might have felt less stilted if I hadn't experienced Zak's previous chemistry/interactions with Tori. (At one point, I was hoping that Tori and Zak might end up together. But Tori ended up with Ezra -- and no, I am not unhappy about that.) Because I had that enjoyable grumpy-marshmallow dynamic with Tori and Zak, the hostility between Saber and Zak just left me feeling 'why?' Why do they keep spending time together? Why is he crashing on her couch? Why did they just suddenly start making out? (Spoiler: Once it's revealed that the unnamed kids are younger 'thems,' their being drawn together makes sense. But before that, it's super clunky.)
But, even though I have these problems with the book, it's not a bad book. In fact, without the rest of the Guild Codex books to color things, standalone it's a good foray into experimental storytelling and approaching things outside in the traditional a, b, c story-telling order. Also, the many threads do come together. There was enough there to keep me reading. There was enough there to keep me continuing on with the series. Most especially, by the end, Saber's personality evened out and was much less annoying. The mystery -- which was kicked off by that murder -- started to unfurl more. By the end, I wanted to find out exactly what happened to them 10 years ago. I wanted to find out why they both felt justified in hating each other, and why Saber's memory is so spotty. I wanted to know bad enough that I *had* to continue reading. And it's written by Annette Marie. I love her stuff, so even though I didn't like the execution, I still mostly like the book (although I still feel unsettled that I couldn't give it at least 4 stars.)
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars. It's well-written enough to hook me, but there were things in the mechanics that detracted from my overall enjoyment of the story.
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