Keeper of Cats

Keeper of Cats Elizabeth Boyer Date: 30 November, 1994   —   used only   —   Book product page Rating:

Fiction, Fantasy

Here's another entry in the truly horrible cover department. If one were to judge the book on the strength of the artwork and blurbs, one would think that this story is about a typical spoiled teenager going off to live with her crazy old female relatives and their excessive amounts of cats. One would be correct— except that the setting is a semi-Norse fantasy land where the society is only now switching over to marriage instead of clan living, and the females used to be the ones in power because the men would all get themselves killed. It's a bit of a far cry from modern suburbia, which is what the cover implies. And there's way too much of the bright green that screams MAGICK (with a k) in cut-rate fantasy.

This isn't cut-rate fantasy; it's a well-thought out world with its own rules, rather than a cheap copy of our own. The kettir— special cats— have appeared in Boyer's work before, particularly in the Catfantastic series of short stories. Jutta, the protagonist, is a spoiled brat, and so it's obvious who the villain is going to be, but Boyer manages to build it up so that it is only a surprise to Jutta, and so not spoiled. I only give it a three because it isn't extraordinary; I'm apparently needing a bit more in my fantasy these days.