Nine of Stars: A slightly rocky introduction to a “new” series

Nine of Stars by Laura Bickle

Nine of Stars (2016), Laura Bickle‘s dark and fantastical tale of an alchemist’s daughter in Wyoming, is attempting to cast a wide net as far as its readership goes. It is billed as both the third instalment of the DARK ALCHEMY trilogy, as well as the first book in the WILDLANDS series, which readers can jump straight into. What’s more, it’s a fantasy-cum-crime-cum-romance, so it should in theory be ticking a lot of boxes for a lot of readers. Jana and Ray have once again joined forces in this review, so in the interest of clarity, we’ve marked Jana’s contributions in black whilst Ray’s are in blue.

Jana: Petra Dee is a geologist living in the small town of Temperance, Wyoming; she spends her days taking rock samples in Yellowstone Park and hanging out with her coyote companion, Sig. She also happens to be the daughter of a skilled alchemist, but seems to be mostly focused on science and its effects on the physical world, a focus she’ll need after her recent leukemia diagnosis. Her supernaturally-inclined boyfriend, Gabriel Manget, worked on a local ranch owned by Sal Rutherford until one mysterious night, when Sal was murdered and the rest of the ranch hands disappeared. And Owen Rutherford, local sheriff and Sal’s cousin, is desperate to find answers after discovering some extremely strange circumstances surrounding Sal’s death and an underground cavern on the Rutherford ranch.

Meanwhile, a wolf pack within the park boundaries is being targeted by a malevolent force known as Skinflint Jack, which seems to be some kind of elk-man hybrid, and who leaves behind grisly bundles made of sticks and wolf hides. Petra and Gabe take it upon themselves to look into the wolf-slayings at the same time as Owen begins his investigation into Gabe’s involvement with Sal’s death, chasing the pair through the pages of Nine of Stars in the pursuit of justice and, incidentally, clarity regarding his own family history.

Jana: I spent a few vacations in Yellowstone Park as a kid, so I can vouch that there are mineral pools and hot springs all over the place, though most of them aren’t safe to climb into and swim around in. (People seriously need to stop doing this.)  And I did appreciate Bickle’s insistence that science, rather than alchemy, would be the solution to Petra’s leukemia, since I detest when fantasy authors magically wish away very real problems and illnesses.

Owen’s chapters were the most compelling and interesting, and it was easy for me to empathize with him because he sees himself as an agent of the law; all he’s trying to do is answer some questions so he can close a murder case.  From his point of view, Petra and Gabe are deliberately evading him, so they must be up to no good.  All of it made perfect sense, even the visitations from Anna, the ghost of the girl whose murder kicked off Owen’s police career. Petra and Gabe are likeable enough, and I appreciated that they each bring something different to their investigation of Skinflint Jack: Gabe’s immersion into alchemy and Petra’s grounding in natural science each get equal play, and both are crucial to the storyline. And adding the sections of perspective from Nine, a female member of the wolfpack, was a neat touch.

Ray: Owen’s chapters arguably propelled this novel. For new readers of the series jumping straight in, he provides a nice foil to the mythological backstory we haven’t really had adequate time to invest in yet. In a story with an increasingly complicated fantastical history, it was really satisfying to have something, his hallucinations, initially attributed to human paranoia and disturbance, and his less than perfect character made him highly relatable. His chapters make the gritty police procedural plot, and for those readers that like a good mystery, they’ll appreciate Owen’s increasing obsession with the murder of his cousin.

Bickle’s prose is initially quite absorbing and it’s easy to be drawn in by the distinctive voices of each of the characters, but I found myself increasingly frustrated by the writing style as the story progressed. Bickle had to rely heavily on exposition to catch readers up with the previous novels, particularly as her story relies so heavily on the mythology from the past series. Where it should’ve been concise, the writing felt a little waffley at times, and I couldn’t help but feel that paragraphs should’ve had a little more pruning here and there.

Jana: As we’ve said, Nine of Stars is simultaneously the third book in the DARK ALCHEMY trilogy (after Dark Alchemy and Mercury Retrograde, both published electronically in 2015) and the first installment in the WILDLANDS series, shifting from digital distribution to print. This provided an obvious difficulty for Bickle: she needed to please established fans by continuing the characters and plotlines established in two previous novels, and at the same time, she needed to accommodate new readers by providing exposition and establishing who the characters and their situations are. It’s an unenviable position, and I think she did the best she could, but Nine of Stars suffers from being too vague in some sections and too expository in others. In particular, emotionally-fraught scenes between Petra and Gabe regarding the future of their partnership didn’t have as much of an impact on me because I didn’t have the background knowledge of watching their relationship grow and change during the preceding books. I’m sure these issues will smooth out in further books, but they do make for a rocky start.

Ray: If there’s one thing that’s going to let this novel down, it’s the fact that readers are asked to jump straight in at this point in the story. It would’ve been a much more satisfying read had readers been prepared to have some gaps in their knowledge of the story. Jana and I are both in agreement that there is a lot of potential in the story and, despite our gripes with the amount of exposition, we are certainly interested to see where Bickle takes the story and the characters. Now that the mythology of the story has been established, the next instalments of the WILDLANDS series will be able to forge ahead without the clunky backstory.