Feline Alchemy is a very imaginative urban fantasy that is filled with surprising twists and turns. The book starts out with the narrator, Blake, planning his “exit strategy,” and saving and inheriting two seemingly innocent kittens instead. Blake, a young curmudgeon, is petulant, self-centered and depressed. . .but that doesn’t mean he’s unlikable. I found myself caring about the character. His attitude on people?
“I hate my neighbors by definition—how dare they live so close to me.”
As we get to know him, he reveals his deepest thoughts and conflicts. He’s a man searching for purpose in life.
“But then I guess being weak starts to become a habit if you haven’t really got any purpose to what you’re doing; if you wake up feeling washed-out, drained, every single day just because you know that what you’ll be doing has got to be pointless.”
While this fantasy novel deals with heavy issues, it never loses its sense of humor, striking quite a delicious, sardonic tone:
“To celebrate ridding myself of any lingering traces of slaughtered strangers, I took another day’s absence from the office.”
The book is filled with lines like that, which I found myself absolutely relishing. I highly recommend it even if fantasy is not your genre because the writing is so clever, and the observations on human nature and the workplace are so perceptive.
Reviewer’s Note: I met Sue Blake via a Facebook group intended for indie authors to meet, chat, and share and review one another’s work. Feline Alchemy is one of the best “finds” I have come across in my budding efforts as a self-published writer. I plan to share more of these “finds” here in the future.
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