Jacob

I was so excited to step back into this world that Kliewer introduced to us through We Used to Live Here. He does such a great job at creating a sense of place and grounding the supernatural elements in his stories, and on finishing this book that was my favorite aspect of The Caretaker.

What bothered me throughout the story was the main character. I'm all for a lovable fuckup or interestingly annoying main character, but Macy just felt so inept to the point where it was frustrating.

I'm definitely interested in reading more of Kliewer's works in the future, but this story just didn't scratch the itch like We Used to Live Here did.

Below are some of my points of frustration with the story:

After the first set of rituals that Macy fails, I expected some sort of growth or understanding to come from her actions. However, all we get is more mistakes and annoying contrivances in order for her to mess up each time. In order to move the story along at a breakneck pace we never get to see her improve or succeed. We never get a moment for her to feel a little peace in order to reflect or process. The story gives us a list of things at the beginning, and we just watch Macy fail each item one-by-one as it goes along. As you can imagine, this becomes a bit repetitive and frustrating. Even after she has a horrible experience the night before, Macy begins to finally improve only to be distracted by a buzzing phone at the last minute.

This was such an interesting story about grief that I believe will stick with me for a long time.

The world of this book deserved better.

I love the idea of a realm ruled by only immortal beings. There is so much potential for the ageless plans and desires of vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers. At the start of this book, it really felt like we were going to experience that. Sadly, as the story goes on we are thrown about without being able to really inspect the world and the desire of the people in it.

The story jumps between a large number of characters, and I believe it would have been so much better either following only one first person narrative or in a complete third person voice. The writing and styles between the character chapters weren't different enough to warrant the switching, and it only made the story a bit frustrating at times.

I feel the start of the book is stronger than the later half. One tipping point for me was when two characters were in a very serious and tense scene, but a character decided it was time to drop a Marvel “well, that just happened.” Why?!

Since this is a series, I'm unsure if I'll continue it once that comes out. If the tone and structure changed, I would definitely give it a try. If it's more of this, I'll pass.

After reading some of the negative reviews for Authority, I wonder if we even read the same book.

While the first book in the Southern Reach series gave us a taste of an otherworldly Area-X, this entry focuses on how bureaucracy and the powers that be attempt to handle such an enigma. I found it to be a thrilling read which widened the world of Area-X but still left mysteries to be pondered.

I rate this book more of a 3.5, but I'm rounding it up to 4.

Compared to the previous entry in this series, there was a lot more world building and time spent learning about the culture of Gallacia. I really enjoyed that, and it makes me eager to hop back into the world when/if we get more entries following Alex. However, in the end we didn't get much time spent on the horror of what was happening at the hunting lodge. I wish more time was spent drawing us into the horror and paying off all of the time spent learning about the people of Gallacia and their ways of thinking.