Charming

Charming (2013) Elliott James

I almost gave up on this. I read the short stories and enjoyed them, but a third of the way in, the story still wasn’t doing it for me.

Again, it was wanting a sense of accomplishment and a curiosity as to how things turned out that kept me reading, and I have to say that about halfway through something changed, and I was suddenly into the story.

John Charming was born both a werewolf and a Knight Templar. These sides don’t get along particularly well, but they do make him very good at killing monsters, something he’s kept doing, even though he is no longer formally a member of the order.

I didn’t find him interesting until the second half of the book. Before then I was more interested in the humans he ends up temporarily working with.

The African American man the van belonged to turned out to be a guy named Chauncey Childers whose parents had obviously combined a love of alliteration with a hatred of small children.

And there’s also Molly, the Episcopal priest. I really liked Molly.

There were some things done that were different from what I was expecting, but for the most part it felt like a decent by overall average supernatural fantasy.
Rating: 6/10

Published by Orbit

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