Paperback Reader

I’m sure I’ll dwell more on this notion later (though, if you’re lucky, the dwelling will happen outside this review). Servant: The Awakening introduces us to 21-year old Gabrielle Cody, a poorly groomed, underfed servant of God. She calls herself a paladin, meaning, I believe, that she sees herself as a warrior for the deity. Her job is to seek out and destroy evil whenever she gets an intense headache.

Gaby lives in an apartment in a bad part of some anonymous city that has a large region filled with prostitutes and drug addicts and drunks and rotten people and the usual stuff that fills a bad part of town. This is fine with our heroine as she is constantly on the run from evil, even though she supposedly the one who is constantly kicking evil’s ass. Gaby awakes on her 21st birthday to a powerful message (delivered via the aforementioned headache) to go out and eliminate some more bad.

God, as we all know from history, is rarely clear with instructions. Gaby, thus, must wander the streets until she finds her evil. She’s guided by some divine sense, sure, but basically it’s a lot of hoping that she ends up at the right place at the right time. As our novel opens, she becomes distracted by some garden variety bums who try to get all sexy with her – her instinctively violent reaction brings her to the attention of handsome Detective Luther Cross.

Gaby doesn’t have time for the law, no sirree. She’s seeking evil and runs away. She ends up killing some secondary evil on her route, leading to more suspicion on the part of Luther, but she’s on a mission. Only the mission isn’t accomplished, and the rest of the book is about how she tries to stop this particular, unformed, unknown evil.

Gaby, whose mother died while giving birth to her during a lightning storm, fears storms. This is not well-explained nor fully developed (except in the romance novel context of allowing the hero and heroine to experience physical contact). She was raised in foster care. She found parenting, of a sort, from a priest. Said priest, who died of cancer, convinced Gaby that her talent for finding evil was a gift from God.

All of this makes Gaby paranoid and rootless and anti-social. She avoids all human emotion, doesn’t get involved, and we’re told she’s constantly changing locales to escape the bad stuff, though, to be honest, I didn’t really get a sense of that. Foster did a lot of telling me what kind of character she wanted Gaby to be, but Gaby simply didn’t conform.

In many ways, she’s your fairly typical romance novel loner. You know the type, life offers up one really bad traumatic experience and that leads to lifelong scars. Except for a few moments that seem to be genuine emotion, Foster really keeps it on the surface with Gaby. I couldn’t find anything in her that made me want to keep buying this series.

There is an unfortunate comparison to Eve Dallas courtesy of a cover quote from Elizabeth Lowell (who probably should retire from the quoting biz after this fiasco), the tough-as-nails heroine created by J.D. Robb. Gaby Cody is no Eve Dallas. Eve is faceted and specific. She’s an active participant in her life. Gaby is blank, unfocused. She waits for orders from God. In many ways, her puppet-like demeanor makes the creepy doll-like drawing on the book’s cover apropos.

I would be remiss if I didn’t dwell on Gaby’s wardrobe for a moment. She wears a typical mish-mash of jeans, t-shirts, and…flip-flops. I mean, this chick is running (very fast) through streets and woods. She’s stepping into icky stuff left and right. She’s kicking – and I mean literally kicking – bad guys around. Ever try to do a serious roundhouse while trying to keep your flip-flop on? I get that people find them to be comfortable, practical shoes, but they are not a great choice when it comes to this character. It’s like Foster is trying to make Gaby too quirky for this book.

Me? I found myself focusing way too much on Gaby’s footwear. Worrying that her shoe would fly off while she was walking through blood and guts. Wondering why in the world she wasn’t smart enough to get herself a real pair of shoes. I know that money’s tight and all, but good boots would be a tax write-off.

Before I get ahead of myself, let’s dispense with the rest of my always useful character analysis. Luther Cross is a detective. In my opinion, he’s the kind of detective who should be busted back to beat cop pronto, but nobody asked me and now it’s all official in a printed book. His fate is sealed. What else about Luther? Oh, right, he’s powerfully attracted to Gaby, despite her foul mouth, foul temper, penchant for violence, horrible clothes, undernourished physique, and whatnot. Also, he plays basketball with underprivileged youth.

The only other character of note (and this should be telling in and of itself) is Gaby’s landlord/literary agent, Morty. Morty is your stereotypical comic book geek. He is also, of course, in serious crush with Gaby, mostly for the same reasons noted under Luther.

But wait, there’s more! Morty inherited an underground comic book store from his mother. Gaby has discovered that she can exorcise her demons by turning her adventures into graphic novels. She mails her manuscripts to Morty (anonymously) and he in turn gets them published, sells them, and, well, you know how the publishing biz goes.

Yes, she’s a mad success!

The plot veers between the intangible evil that Gaby must fight and the budding romance between Gaby and Luther. As noted above, Luther isn’t much of a detective, so Gaby conveniently pulls together a bunch of clues (many from thin air) and sends him to detect. He does his duty, the great mystery is solved (with the villain named for the reader long before Gaby figures it out…what ever happened to the element of surprise?), and our heroes live to fight another day.

Foster actually had an interesting plot thing going on for a while there. All of the victims of evil (should I be capitalizing it, Evil?) have cancer. Gaby has issues with cancer. Cancer, she knows, is a living thing and unstoppable. Had Foster continued to examine the parallels between her Evil and cancer, maybe she could have made something of this story. She just doesn’t take it far enough to make it gel.

The relationship between Luther and Gaby is uncomfortable. There’s a, give or take, ten-year difference in their ages. But Gaby is such a…child. It should go without saying (but why let something pass when it can be discussed in great detail?) that she’s a virgin. Not just any virgin, but one of those virgins who – despite spending an unhealthy amount of time observing prostitutes at work (and you know what I mean) – doesn’t have a clue about oral sex. When she sees a couple in the act in an alley, it’s like the great mystery of life.

I really hate stupidity in characters, and lack of television and radio is no excuse. Heck, doing God’s work is no excuse. This character’s cluelessness does not jibe with her, well, character. Gaby comes off as dumb and clueless. Naïve beyond comfortable. Luther comes off like a father figure rather than lover. That makes their relationship icky, not sexy.

May-December romances make for an interesting fantasy…as long as December doesn’t seem like May’s daddy.

I am not entirely sure what was awakened in this novel. Sure, I know better than to take book titles seriously, but, uh, doesn’t awakening sort of portend, I dunno, something? Like a beginning? A new awareness? Gaby was already pretty much in a groove with her skills when the book began. Oh, I get it. She was sexually awakened. Except not so much. Given how this novel ended, Gaby is probably still trying to figure out how all her female parts work.

Trouble is, there wasn’t anything else to awaken, unless you count her lame-o friend Mort. He was all transformed into a geeky warrior-hero type at the end of the novel.

I think I mentioned, oh several reviews ago, how totally out the whole mysterious evil thing is. Authors have overdone the distant third person glimpses of the villain – hacking away at body parts, plotting with glee, spying and foiling to his or her heart’s content. And, if the entire mysterious villain thing is overdone, the switcheroo reveal that the bad guy is really a woman is running into dangerous territory as well; this is just a public service message, not a commentary on this particular novel. I am so sick of the careful language that walks in circles to avoid revealing a villain’s gender.

Authors, you are only fooling yourselves.

You know what? Spoilers be damned! I just lied to you; I wasn’t doing public service. Foster set up a novel with two potential villains. One is drawn as bad and uncaring. This one is what we like to call a red herring. The other is good and kind. In skillful hands, we believe the uncaring dude is the bad dude until the sheer evilness of the true bad dude is revealed. To do this without any sort of halfway decent character (or plot) development is the sign of an author who is not trading on cleverness. If I can spot the villain the first time he or she appears on the page, well, so can you.

Evil must be specific to be truly terrifying. A novel’s heroes need to be fighting something tangible. A major flaw throughout this novel is the lack of specificity. Why is this evil happening? Oh, it’s all made clear at the very end. Well, that’s just dandy. Make us suffer without a clue. No, dear authors, you must make your evil real to invest the reader in your story. What are the stakes for the hero, the heroine, the villain, mankind?

Foster came from the category romance world, and it shows here. Category, harkening back to the days of Joan Bryant and Alan Boon and a time when the books were sold many years after publication, avoids specificity. No brand names, no precision colors, no details that might date a work. Foster softens the edges of the world she builds to the point where it’s generic.

Drugged-out whores abound – are they speed freaks or heroin junkies? Both types are drugged out, but different characters. The street scene depicted in this novel is Hollywood-pristine, not gritty and evocative. Even the murders lack sharp detail. Maybe this is why Foster chose to set the story in an anonymous city. Makes avoiding concrete details that much easier.

And oh yeah, making God a major influence in the plot works is a great and novel approach – but Foster fails to make God a serious character. Had she shown that kind of bravery, this would be a different review. If Gaby is truly directed by God, then, well, show some divine intervention or something. Don’t tell me that God is pulling her strings. Make God a character. Be bold. Make me believe, if only for the course of this story.

Otherwise, you have a heroine who’s out there hacking up people based on her claims that they’re evil. We’re told that she can see their true selves, their demon faces, but I dunno. Gaby’s a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to her actions. She engages in violence without divine motivation. She acts on her own. How do I know she’s reliable?) There is no evidence that she’s getting messages from a good spirit. If you pay attention to the news, lots of serial killers claim that God is sending them instructions.

So while I like the idea of God doing his (or her or its) thing, I didn’t buy it as a plot device. Foster simply didn’t lay the foundation for me to believe in her heroine, her motivation, or her boss. I managed to finish this book thanks to a strong determination to remain on a treadmill for a full hour today; I won’t be buying the sequel.

You can find Lori Foster here. You can buy Servant: The Awakening here or here. You can, as always, agree or disagree in the comments section below.