Review: The Glass Gargoyle

The Glass Gargoyle by Marie Andreas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

Taryn St Giles is an archaeologist down on her luck, forced to resort to bounty hunting to make ends meet. She is the reluctant owner of three fairies who can usually be relied upon to get drunk and start fights. As the book opens Taryn is hunting for a bounty, although she collars him relatively easy he doesn't stay collared for long - and that is the start of a crazy journey. Soon there are mysterious disappearances, dead bodies, mysterious strangers, gypsies, jinn, elves, trolls, dragon-like creatures etc, etc.

Where to start? First, I received this ARC back in January last year, so my bad for not reading and reviewing earlier. However, the book was first published in March 2015 so I really don't understand why my copy has so many words runningtogether missing the intervening spaces. Also, there appears to be no formatting of the chapter headings which makes it difficult to 'feel' the breaks between chapters as they just merge into one long chapter. Previewing the Kindle version on Amazon doesn't look that much better either.

Second, there is waaaay too much stuff in this book and not enough world-building/ development. It doesn't help that Taryn hasn't a clue what is going on. I think it took half the book before the eponymous Glass Gargoyle was even mentioned. Taryn has a backstory and a mystery about her species which are just barely glanced upon. There seems to be a cast of thousands and the purpose of most of them seems vague at best. Villains drop in and out and we don't know why. The book even ends on a sort of cliffhanger - sort of.

I don't know whether Marie Andreas has got the idea for the whole series in her mind and has written the series as if it were one long book, or if she had so many ideas that she couldn't bear to to drop any, but the book ended up as a series of occurrences with no real conclusion. I still have no idea what species Taryn belongs to, I don't know who/ what Alric is (although I do have a good idea), I don't know who hired the jinn, I don't understand the Marcos plot, I don't know what set off all of these events, I don't see the purpose of Harlan, Covey, Cirocco, Dogmaela or Foxy, heck half the time I couldn't tell whether they were friends or enemies (obviously not the ones who were marked as enemies). There are extinct/ mythical elves, older more ancient races, lots of new creatures that I've never heard of, magical powers, although Taryn is a null, potions etc AND NONE OF IT IS EXPLAINED.

I think there is a really good series possibly lost in this but I just can't summon up the enthusiasm to try reading the second book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.


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