Magic and the Shinigami Detective

I love the premise – alternate universe/magic and steampunk mystery. Wonderful! There can always be more books like that. :)

The one drawback for me was that even though Henri and Jamie (the main characters) were totally likeable, I personally didn't connect to them. I'm a super character-oriented reader, so this made it hard to get into the book. Henri, the primary narrator, embodies a lot of my favorite tropes – cold to most people/dedicated to one person, the intellectual forced into the field, etc – but unfortunately he didn't feel like more than those tropes to me. I think it's because I never really had a feel for what he wanted/why he was writing a novel rather than a sterile report. And while it's always pretty clear what Jamie wants – or at least what Henri thinks she wants, haha – I had a hard time sympathizing with her. She's gone through some incredibly traumatic events, but she presents as a Mary Sue with an addiction to pop culture references (some of which started to feel fan service-y, which may be why I didn't like her as much). She has friends in super high places who are all super protective and give her as much as they can, and she's kind of living her best life, aside from not having some Earth conveniences. She's never, ever vulnerable, which on one hand makes total sense given her backstory, but on the other hand was kind of alienating, because Henri spends a lot of time feeling sorry for her/worrying over her and meanwhile she's operating at a really high level in all situations, even when she's in bed for a few days. Maybe I'm just jealous? xD Rant over.

The bottom line is that the world here is really cool, and my reservations about the characters might just be because I'm weird. :) I'd recommend this to people looking for a mystery set in a nontraditional world. Especially people who love anime or steampunk.

2023 re-read:
This is such a delightful series. Decided to re-read from the start because of the next book coming out in May! ^_^ This series features a modern Earth woman pulled through a portal to a different planet that is in the equivalent of England's Victorian era, but with magic. It is a detective novel as they are trying to hunt down thieves, but it is fantasy too in a way that feels very steampunk because they are mixing magic with her ideas from Earth (cellphones, traffic lights, etc.)

Honestly, this is genre-crossing at it's finest. If I was cataloging by genre and came across this book I think I'd cry.