Title: The Trouble with Twelfth Grave
Author: Darynda Jones
Series: Charley Davidson #12
supernatural Stephanie Plum at first, now so much more
I would like to thank Darynda Jones, St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, and NetGalley for enticing me to check out this series by offering a free copy of First Grave on the Right and allowing me to read an ARC of The Trouble with Twelfth Grave in exchange for an honest review.
Here’s a spoiler alert, though I imagine most people reading this are up-to-date. If you’re a Charley Davidson virgin and thinking about starting with book 12—just don’t. Start with #1 and thank me later. The books in this series aren’t meant to stand alone, at least in my opinion. Jones recaps pertinent information, so you won’t be completely lost, but you won’t truly appreciate the overarching plot if you aren’t familiar with the story up to this point, and the characters and their roles may bemuse you a bit.
Because I consumed all twelve books and some of the various short stories inside a two week period, all of the plotlines run together in my mind and I’m not entirely sure what happened in which book, so this is a review on the series as a whole to this point. And it’s super long. More of a very thorough book report. Sorry for that. Not really.
Edit: There are a few comments specific to 12 toward the end.
When I first began reading this series, it didn’t take me long to come up with a three-word description: supernatural Stephanie Plum. (Best pitch ever.) The similarities to Janet Evanovich’s series slapped me in the face. Charley Davidson has totally evolved into her own thing by now, but at the beginning, it seemed like a formulaic clone, whether it was intentional or not. Crime/murder mystery with romance; light tone with lots of humor; first person narrative; fast-paced action-packed plot; urban setting; lots of cultural/regional color; a quirky brunette main character with a lot of personality and a rockin’ bod (despite her love of junk food and allergy to exercise); a best friend sidekick with questionable fashion sense and who is likely overweight; a serious, though somewhat on-and-off romantic interest; a teased back-up romantic interest in the skip tracing/security business; a relative, perhaps considered eccentric, who always has the MC’s back; a conservative, disapproving mother figure; an older, more normal but supportive sister; and a plethora of interesting, funny, lovable associates.
Wanna be a successful mystery writer and someday have your own brand? Just copy and paste.
But in twice the number of books, Stephanie Plum is still pretty much doing the same ol’, same ol’. As a character, as a plot, she hasn’t done much evolving. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, she still entertains and I still love her stories, but personally, I’m getting rather tired of watching her spin her wheels. Charley Davidson, on the other hand, has grown as a person and as a plot, and so has her supporting cast. She’s developed skills, learned lessons, got married, had a baby, lost loved ones. A lot of them. She doesn’t waver in her convictions. She faces new challenges, meets them head-on, and works hard to overcome them. There are real stakes for Charley, and she doesn’t always save the day, but you can be damn sure she’ll give it her best shot.
I love Charley, though I doubt we’d be friends irl. Similar sense of humor, very different personalities. I have to admit, there were a few times when I got a smidge impatient with her antics. Now and again I would commiserate with her friends because the choices she made were reckless, but I ultimately forgave her—except when she was pregnant. There’s always someone trying to kill her, she’s always getting hurt—badly—and she knew it; she should have been terrified of miscarrying. I was surprised Reyes didn’t sit her down and have a come-to-Jesus, please-don’t-kill-our-helpless-fetus-with-your-recklessness talk with her. I almost pulled my hair out of my head the moment I read that the departed nun had led her to stand directly on top of very old boards covering a well. I immediately knew what was coming. I mean seriously, there was no common sense at play there. But Beep was safe and sound in the end, thank Reyes’s Brother, so I can only hope Charley learned what not to do when nine freaking months pregnant. Overall, though, I love that she’s not a Mary Sue. I love that almost nothing goes right for her. It makes for a great character and fun fiction.
Reyes had his heart-melting moments. I adored watching him be domestic, cooking or relaxing at home barefoot. Whenever he’s tender with Beep or another child, I ovulate. However, I don’t think I loved him as much as I was supposed to. I understand that he represents a paradox, a being who was literally created in the fires of hell but who isn’t inherently evil and has the capacity to love unconditionally—but I thought he was kind of an ass. I’m not immune to the charms of a sexy bad boy hero, but he was too angry, too volatile, too broody. I don’t have the patience to tolerate that moodiness. His hair-trigger temper was exhausting and exasperating, and for someone whose mission in life was to protect Charlie, to love her, he didn’t treat her very well, at least emotionally. I found his habit of grabbing her throat disturbing, though I think it was supposed to be intimate or erotic or something. Personal. I guess I would feel threatened and vulnerable if a guy manhandled me by the neck. Perhaps that was the point, but then I just don’t understand why Charley kept allowing him to do that to her.
What irritated me the most was his hypocrisy when he demanded commitment from Charley and yet held back so much of himself. When he removed the wall between their apartments, I was ticked. It was bullying, plain and simple. He had no right to invade her privacy, to push her like that when she clearly had misgivings. If he’d just been open and honest with her, those misgivings wouldn’t have stood between them, and he wouldn’t have had to be forceful. For the most part, Charley only kept secrets from him because he kept them from her. When it came to their relationship, he was his own worst enemy, and he was so absolutely, frustratingly blind to that fact.
I started skipping the sex scenes early on because—well, for one thing I wasn’t comfortable with how explicit they became—but also they’d begun to feel gratuitous (the kitchen utensil sex scene really wasn’t necessary. What did it add to the story?). Relative, I got sick of hearing how impossibly beautiful and sexy Reyes was every time he was in a scene and how Charley was in a constant state of arousal around him. I understand that being sin incarnate was part of his character, and that she was extremely attracted to him, but I felt like I was beaten over the head with it.
There’s an amazing supporting cast. I love most of them dearly, but some of them I could live without. Cookie’s the ultimate bestie. Amber’s a sweetheart, as is Quentin. I have special places in my heart for Uncle Bob and Angel. Rocket, though frustrating, is endearing, and there’s something adorable about Strawberry’s madness. I liked Garrett better before he went to hell, but I still look forward to seeing him. I’m not sure we needed to dive into his background; it feels like a missed opportunity at this point, like it was full of potential but now we’ve missed our chance to utilize it. I don’t think much of Gemma or Pari, but I don’t dislike them. Special Agent Carson is always entertaining. It’s nice to see the Sanchez family every now and then. I was never sure what to think about Charley’s dad. Her stepmother Denise was horrid; I don’t completely understand what happened to her, but I’m glad she’s gone. I like Sister Mary Elizabeth, but she isn’t very useful anymore now that angels visit Charley directly. Cut out the middleman, as it were. There’s Artemis, and Blue, and Mr. Wong, and Aunt Lil, and the bikers, and her old classmates, and the angels—as I said, a plethora.
And Osh. I love Osh. Osh is my favorite character next to Charley. I might even like him more than her. I can’t get enough of him. There’s just something about him that’s so utterly captivating. He’s wise and youthful and dark and powerful, unfathomably sexy, all at once. He’s like Reyes without the self-loathing, temper, and attitude. He lets you believe he’s everything a demon slave would be—unscrupulous, selfish, immoral, untrustworthy. But he’s actually an upstanding guy and the wisest of the lot; admittedly, it was a gray area when he was eating the souls of good people who were stupid enough to gamble them away, but now he only eats souls destined for hell. Speaking of—I love watching him eat souls. No clue why. And it threw me when Charley revealed he was destined to be with Beep, but I am so on board. It’s disturbing to imagine a grown man being involved with an infant, but I imagine it’ll be easier to comprehend when she’s older. I hope we get to see that plot unfold; I’m so excited to watch them fall in love.
Jones’ writing, stylistically, is concise and easy to follow. Not overly complicated sentences, no pretentious word choices. What astounds me is how well she channels the easily distracted, erratic mind of someone with ADHD, and she makes it WORK. She allows Charley her tangents, but keeps a tight rein on them. The focus, the tone, of a scene is never lost.
Structurally, her writing is inspirational. My (envious) writer’s mind studied the last few books as I read them. More often than not, I don’t see the twists coming, and the pace is fast, but not so fast that there isn’t time for exposition and character development. I had difficulty finding stopping points to pause the audiobook, because there was always an interesting scene, if not an action-fueled one, going on, and I didn’t want to stop listening. It takes a lot of talent to keep the reader’s attention while serving a dose of necessary exposition, and even more talent to serve that exposition without the reader noticing. Jones is fantastic at using dialogue and humor to help deliver it, much as a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. I believe she outlines like crazy to produce lean, layered, action-packed plots. It makes a strong argument for plotting over pantsing.
However, there can be too much of a good thing. There are far too many subplots. At times there’s simply too much going on, too many threads and character backstories to keep track of. They all get tangled. I have no idea if all of them have been fulfilled and concluded. It would take a spreadsheet and flow chart to trace all of them, and that’s too much work for the average reader. I had to learn to shrug off minor loose ends.
Compounding the abundance of subplots issue is that from book to book, Jones works hard to top herself and build on the story that she’s established, which is commendable, but by so doing, she seems to rewrite some of her own mythology. (I think Charley comes by her obsession with loopholes naturally.) To keep the mystery intact, she tries to lead us to one conclusion when there’s an entirely different explanation, and she does it so often that it all gets jumbled. Plus, everyone seems to have their own interpretation of Charley’s celestial past, either honestly misunderstanding facts or purposefully twisting them to manipulate her, so between all the misdirects and misunderstandings, shit’s getting ridiculous. It’s one thing when Charley’s a portal to heaven. I can grasp that. It’s entirely another when she’s a celestial being—no, a bloodthirsty war god—nevermind, a compassionate war god—from another dimension who was formed by the merging of the other gods in that dimension—no wait she ate them to gain more power—no wait she ate them because they were bullying her—and who succumbed to the ultimate female folly and believed she could tame the bad boy—why she fell in love with a malevolent entity in the first place, I still don’t know—and pleaded with God to allow her to send said bad boy, who is His brother, to a paradise hell dimension in her world in exchange for her servitude, an abasement of her status, and the manipulation of her memory. And that’s just a small sample.
Aside from the mythology, the rules and limits of supernatural abilities lost me a while back. One thing I’m thoroughly confused about is the situational physicality of the supernatural beings, like the limits of being corporeal, what exactly happens when they’re incorporeal, shifting, straddling dimensions. Also, I’ve failed to understand the rules and limits of Charley’s human biology versus her celestial powers. Admittedly, it’s hard to instill a sense of danger for a character who is immortal and can heal from fatal wounds in minutes, but I still can’t quite swallow the fact that being drugged keeps her from using her powers. She can’t get drunk, but the human part of her—which is equivalent to ONE GRAIN OF SAND IN THE SAHARA—can be drugged. Nah, just not buying it.
But honestly, at this point, I don’t care. These books are so fricken entertaining than I learned to just accept what I’m told at any given moment and go with it. Ultimately, it’s the characters that matter, not the mythology, and I love the characters, so I let the conflicting information go.
Edit: It’s been over a week now, and I’m still scratching my head over two things in book 12.
One, that apparently spirits who stick around for a while lose sight of the living—literally—except they can still see individuals who are sensitive to the supernatural realm. All her life, Charley’s dealt with spirits decades if not centuries old, and she’s just now learning of this asterick? It seems like a detail that should have come up before. Just imo, it feels like a contrived loophole to make the priest situation make sense, and it was paramount that the priest situation work to set up the very last scene, which sets up the plot—one of them, anyway—for the next book. It’s an example of the changing mythology I’ve learned to just roll with.
Two, I don’t completely understand what happened with Reyes in this book. I don’t get what was illusion and what was real. Maybe if I talk it out I can force it to make sense. So R-keen was the original, then his energy was used to create R-ziel, who was reborn (process: unknown) in a human body named Reyes.
Wait. You know what? I think I know what’s tripping me up. When Jones says R-keen’s “energy” was used to create R-ziel, I envision him losing only a fraction of his essence, like Voldemort making a horcrux. I had it in my head that R-keen was still a separate entity running around in the cosmos somewhere, waiting to escape and wreak havoc, but I think what Jones meant by R-keen’s “energy” was all of his celestial form. Then it would make more sense, because there is no R-keen still running around. R-keen in his entirety was turned into R-ziel; a god was turned into a demon prince. Then the demon prince, aka the god, turned himself into a human. He crammed all his celestial energy as well as his demonic energy into a human shell. So Reyes, R-ziel, and R-keen are all the same; he is one being whose form has been changed over millenia—but his mind and heart remained constant. The state and opinions of that mind and heart changed, though, as everyone’s does, when he learned to love and experienced hardships that taught him to appreciate that love and life itself. And thus Reyes as we know him, the product of all that history.
But Charley was leery of that truth—and it’s Reyes’ fault! He was the one always telling her that she’d change once she remembered who/what she truly was. He had no faith whatsoever that she’d still love him, that she’d stay with him once she realized she was a god shacked up with a glorified demon. So when Charley learned that he’d been more than Satan’s son, she became afraid that when he, in turn, heard his celestial name, he would change and become evil. So Reyes had his work cut out for him when he did finally hear his celestial name and Charley was scared he’d turn on her at any moment. He had to prove to her that wouldn’t happen, prove once and for all that he was Reyes, period, and there was no chance he’d ever turn on her or their child, just as she’d had to prove to him that she had always and would always love him. He also had to prove to his Brother that he was no longer that naughty god who’d needed to be locked away for the sake of the cosmos. So when he let them believe he’d reverted to the R-keen mindset, to R-keen attitudes, as if being Satan’s son and Reyes the human had never happened, he was just making a very elaborate demonstration.
BUT Reyes himself wasn’t 100% sure that he would escape the god glass unscathed, so on the chance that he came back influenced by something malevolent, he somehow (just accept it) altered his own memory so he wouldn’t remember Beep existed. He came back knowing there was one thing more precious to Charley, to Jehovahn, than anything else, and it was the only thing he could use to prove his true nature and trustworthiness—he just couldn’t remember exactly what it was or where to find it.
I get it nowww… Unless I’m wrong. If I am, please, for the love of Reyes’ Brother, correct me. Regardless, though, THAT is way too fricken complicated. I mean, seriously. While authors need to trust readers to understand the material, this is asking a lot. It doesn’t seem so complicated when it’s all laid out in a couple of paragraphs like that, but when it’s delivered in disorganized bits and pieces throughout several different books, and there’s time in between those books when you forget most of the details, it’s not so easy to see. So you’re welcome. Given that’s right.
Looking to the future of the series, I hope the release date Amazon lists for #13 is tentative and very subject to change. It would be my luck that I get super invested in a series that has been pretty consistently releasing a new installment twice a year…just in time for it to break that habit and make me wait a WHOLE year. On the bright side, I’d rather have to wait a year after book 12 than book 11.
I know. First world problems.
Amazon also says book 13 will be the final installment, so maybe that date (October 30, 2018) is legit, and Jones and her team are going to make sure they dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s to reduce the potential volume of hate mail from fans who aren’t satisfied with the finale. Can’t blame them for that. Encourage it, actually. With reluctance. Quality over speed. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
And speculate.
If 13 is the finale, I wonder if that means it’s the end of the Charley Davidson universe altogether, or if it’s just the end of Charley’s narrative. Maybe it’ll just be the end of this timeline, and a new series will present a time jump to when Beep takes center stage, told either in Charley’s or Beep’s POV, hopefully Beep’s. There are so many open plots to fill book 13 (I started to list them, got to ten, and stopped) that I simply cannot imagine there’ll be room for Beep to take on Lucifer. That’s always felt like an entirely separate chain of events to me, and I would hate to believe that Jones would skim over the intrigue she’s cultivated, skim over everything she’s teased as Beep’s (and Osh’s) destiny, and just wrap it up without giving that plot its due diligence. I did some cursory research to see if there are any rumors but didn’t find anything. It might be too early. So, again, we’ll wait and see.
My review of The Curse of Tenth Grave
My review of Eleventh Grave in Moonlight
My NON-SPOILER review of Summoned to Thirteenth Grave
My SPOILER review of Summoned to Thirteenth Grave
From the publisher:
Fun fact for each of the books in the series
First chapter of Summoned to Thirteenth Grave
