The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off has brought me some real gems (Orconomics in particular I loved) and also some real duds (I did not like Murder at Spindle Manor). But I do love self-published works, and so when the slate of finalists came out, I decided to grab the titles that called my name. I won’t be reviewing all of them, though I’d already read Wolf of Withervale which I quite enjoyed, but don’t see winning because of how unabashedly queer it is. Unfortunately, I found By a Silver Thread to be a missed opportunity with interesting ideas and flawed execution.
Read If Looking For: classic urban fantasy elements, fun magic, an interesting take on fey
Avoid if Looking For: tightly plotted stories, fleshed-out characters
Elevator Pitch
Lola is a changeling, supposed to have died as a child after replacing a human baby. However, a ruthless blood mage has kept her alive, turning her into a servant dependent on his medicine to keep her from dissolving into a monster. Unfortunately, he has gone missing, his home ransacked, and Lola only has enough pills for a few days. The hunt is on to find her master, and she’s willing to work with anyone to guarantee that she stays human(ish).
What Worked For Me
I have not read the other series in this world, but I loved the urban fantasy location. Magic isn’t secret, hidden away. Instead it’s a glorious version of Detroit with dragons and fairies and gods running noodle shops and illusionary halloween decorations. It was a really fun setting, and a nice shift from the ‘typical’ hidden world of urban fantasies. It was clear there were easter eggs her for other series here, but I never felt like I was missing out. It also had some classic urban fantasy elements that were fun (lots of guys in love with Lola, a pretty good sex scene, etc etc) that I think would satisfy fans of this genre.
Lola’s magic was also a big plus. Obviously as a changeling she can change her shape, but she can use it to create … pretty much anything. It was a tad disappointing that her gossamer (essence) mostly went towards creating vehicles for her to travel with instead of finding more creative uses for this, but it was good at sparking the imagination.
What Didn’t Work for Me
Unfortunately, I didn’t think this novel quite held up. I had a tough time figuring out why I was disengaging from the story, slipping into skimming through pages instead of living in the moment with the story. While there’s a variety of issues, including that I think the writing for this story needed to be punchier and tighter, there were two major issues I had with it.
First of all, Lola was a self-insert character in the worst possible way. Beyond a fixation with her sister and her relentless desire to find her master for her meds, she didn’t have a personality (and neither of those two things feel like particularly interesting parts of a character). Her dialogue could be traded out for any other character, her worldview was decidedly pedestrian for someone with as much control over her body and appearance as she does, and she serves as a vessel for the plot instead of an interesting character in her own right.
Which exacerbated my second problem greatly: the plot just doesn’t hold up. To begin with, the major twist/reveal was foreshadowed to aggressively to early, while still being presented as a mystery. While this is something that’s hard to gauge as a ‘me problem’ vs a ‘book problem’ there were enough moments where two key plot points were presented next to each other that painted a pretty clear trail of bread crumbs. An early reveal could have been fine, but since the book tried to keep building suspense for something obvious I didn’t particularly care about what was happening. On top of that, there were some events that didn’t pass muster, and unfortunately they forced me to reconsider the entire book, because they made the entire story feel like a pointless masquerade for the sake of drama, instead of a realistic situation based on the circumstances of the world we’re in. It was just a failure on a lot of levels for me.
In Conclusion: a disappointing urban fantasy whose poor plotting and characters sabotaged a really interesting idea and setting
- Characters – 2
- Worldbuilding – 4
- Craft – 2
- Themes – 1
- Enjoyment – 2
Marked for Plot 