The Enchantment Emporium; Tanya Huff

Tanya Huff is a new to me Canadian author I found on the "fabulous new finds" shelves in my local library. This book was published this year by Daw. I searched for a book site for her without success, although she has a livejournal page, the title above links to a wiki page about her. ISFDB has a page for her. Ms. Huff has a huge list of work, none of which I'm familiar with- a condition many Canadian authors probably suffer with (ie: Americans being totally clueless about our good neighbors' literary work). I have managed to find one of her older works: titled Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light, which I look forward to reading sometime soon.

I have to say the title and cover sucked me right in- that the blurb sounded fascinating was a bonus. Ms. Huff has developed a detailed alternate reality version of Canada populated with well developed, articulate characters (in this case primarily women) who have what we would likely consider paranormal gifts. The Gale family is comprised almost entirely of women, the few directly related male members of the family are carefully portioned out to the other ladies 'to keep the bloodlines pure' according to the characters. Once I realized what that actually was, it squicked me out totally. Still does. Despite that Ms. Huff managed to pull me deeper into her story.

Alysha Gale is twenty four, newly unemployed and has been summoned across Canada by a mysterious letter mailed to her by her grandmother that opens: "If you're reading this I'm dead.." or something close to that. Allie has to go to her grandmother's antique shop and figure out what's happening. No one is totally sure if grandmother is dead or not, so Allie and her favorite cousin and their childhood friend Michael are ordered to figure out exactly what's going on. After that it's nonstop action: leprechauns, gates that allow powerful beasts into the mortal realm, mysterious spelled cell phones, baked goods that have spells and charms baked right in. Let's not forget the seventh son of a seventh son and yummy delicious bad guys that have this romance reader wishing the bad guys had books all their own.

I really enjoyed The Enchantment Emporium. I felt like I was dropped into a fully developed world, as opposed to enduring lots of world building. I'm hopeful Ms. Huff will write more books set in this world, preferably with more on stage action by the bad guys!

This is post #973 for those of you keeping track of my 1,000 post giveaway