Sword-edged Blonde (Eddie LaCrosse #1) ★★★☆☆

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Title: Sword-edged Blonde
Series: Eddie LaCrosse #1
Author: Alex Bledso
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 320
Words: 82K

Synopsis:

Eddie LaCrosse is a sword jockey, ie, a private detective. He's hired by his childhood friend King Phil to prove that King Phil's wife didn't kill and then eat their newborn baby.

Along the way Eddie has to revisit his past and the reason he left the kingdom that Phil now rules.

Eddie solves the case, vindicates Phil's faith in his wife, takes down an evil dwarf that has been alive over 500 years and finds the love of his life prophesied about over 10 years ago.

My Thoughts:

While I was reading this I was fully into the story and enjoying it. However, once the story ended and I began thinking about what I had read, a couple of things came to the forefront for me.

First, I am reading more and more noir'ish Private Eye books. What's more, I am generally liking them too. The Grimnoir, The Arcane Casebook, Garrett PI, etc. The thing is, those all have elements of the PI AND some other element (urban fantasy, fantasy). This, though, only gave lip service to the fantasy element. The only fantastic thing was that the wife of King Phillip used to be a goddess and that the evil dwarf was actually just a human who had messed with the goddess and been punished. That's it. No other races, no magic spells, no grimoires, not even one magic sword. Not cool.

In conjunction with that was the deliberate anachronisms that the author uses. Between names of people that you'd expect to meet on the street today, to terms about weapons and businesses that fully belong in the 21^st century, Bledsoe kept pulling me out of the story. It was obviously deliberate and meant as some sort of selling point to distinguish the series but it did not work for me one tiny bit.

I've been debating about whether to keep on with the series. Like I said, while I was reading I was enjoying, but the moment I stopped, well, it all came crashing down. And it wasn't like I was enjoying the read on a Neal Asher level. This was a grocery store frozen cheese pizza kind of enjoyment. With that, I don't think I'll be continuing the series. There are so many other books I can try out (and hopefully enjoy more) that it isn't worth continuing this “just because I didn't hate it”.

★★★☆☆