Short Book Reviews: The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott

The Keeper's Six, by Kate Elliott (Tordotcom)

 I’m an unabashed fan of stories featuring kick-ass older women. My favorites include The Stone War by Madeleine E. Robins and Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population. Now I add The Keeper's Six, by Kate Elliott. The story opens with middle-aged Esther getting a frantic, cut-off phone call from her adult son, Daniel. It turns out to be every mother’s nightmare: He’s been kidnapped. Only this is not the mundane world and Daniel’s kidnapper turns out to be a dragon lord who lives in an island of stable reality in the midst of the non-real, ever-shifting, fatally treacherous Beyond where Dark is deadly but Bright daylight is even more so. Esther is not without resources. Although they are on temporary suspension by the Powers-That-Be, she is a member of a Hex, a five-person magical team, a combination freelance fortune hunters and SWAT team. Their sixth member is Daniel, Keeper to the Keep (a bungalow on Oahu where Daniel’s partner and their quadruplet toddlers live) that provides passage and anchor between ordinary reality to the Beyond. After some persuasion, for Esther is responsible for the suspension and hence not in the Hex’s good graces, she convinces them to track down Daniel and rescue him, whatever it takes. Daniel, meanwhile, has been organizing the dragon lord’s servants to demand better working conditions through collective bargaining while whipping up heavenly pastries.

The story is by turns dramatic, thriller-tense, full of reversals and plot twists, inventive in both world-building and character development, touching, and funny. (I love the idea of magically indentured servants going on strike.) And a sweet could-be-love story. Elliott pulls off the difficult feat of weaving in backstory and innovative world-building without losing the dramatic movement of the opening scenes. It’s a stand-alone, self-contained gem. I expect fans will clamor for a sequel or five. The Keeper’s Six is so perfect, I hope she resists.

 

GUEST BLOG: Catherine Lundoff on “Adventures in Marketing: Promoting My First Novel”

Book promotion: the thing most of us love to hate but have to do. What follows is an overview of what I did before and after my first novel was published in May, 2012.

Back in the misty regions of 2011, my publisher (Lethe Press) and I agreed that my first novel, Silver Moon, would be published in 2012. Armed with a copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s BookLife, I started planning. I knew I was going to need all the marketing help I could get and practice makes perfect and all that.

I started out by trying to define my book. I had to understand what I was selling, apart from “my first novel.” Silver Moon is a novel about a menopausal woman who turns into a werewolf. It is also about developing a community and starting a new life. And my protagonist begins to come out as a bi woman over the course of the novel. It is not, however, primarily a romance nor is it erotica. This description helped me identify possible target audiences for the book: older women, werewolf fans, fans of LGBTQ fantasy, general fantasy readers, etc.

Then I moved on to what I had to work with.