Cat Sidhe
Series: The Merliss Tales, Book 2; Into the Witch Lands, Book 1
By: Jeff Chapman / Narrated By: Jannie Meisberger
Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
An enchanting Mid-Evil Medieval Tale!
How can a person NOT like this book when its main heroine is a cat? Welllll, she’s not totally a cat, she’s Merliss, once a human but she ticked off the wrong person and now she’s been a human in a cat’s body, sloooowly becoming more cat-like with the passing of aaages. Yes, she’s THAT old.
Cat Sidhe (And don’t even ask me how I pronounced Sidhe before I heard it narrated—MOST embarrassing!) doesn’t pick up where the first book, The Great Contagion, left off. Rather, it’s been many many years and the “cunning” man she wound up with after strife and chaos, Fendrel, has become a renowned healer, quite old. And when this story opens, we see Merliss accompanying the new apprentice, Saerwynn, guiding the lummox of a young woman to various plants and herbs Fendrel has required. Upon finding a certain pimpernel, Saerwynn gathers the plants up, and soon we find that the pimpernel was a fake. Indeed, the gathering of it has summoned a ferocious Cat Sidhe who means great harm.
Alas, Saerwynn doesn’t heed the most plaintive and commanding of meows from Merliss, and she is trapped in the gaze of the Cat Sidhe, which is terribly unfortunate as Saerwynn will now become the mesmerized slave of the beast. The Cat Sidhe requires a slave with opposable thumbs to do what it cannot do for itself.
Not that it’s unable to do much; nooo, it can run desperately fast, can attack and maim, and a tangle between it and Merliss has her haunches clawed and injured.
Then we come to a portal which introduces us into different places; Saerwynn (After Merliss arranges a rescue) winds up in one place, whilst Merliss ends up somewhere else, and boy shall the twain never meet. Each is on their own with Saerwynn actually kinda sorta coming into her powers. Could it be that Fendrel’s belief in the git o’ a girl was with merit? And what about Merliss, in another place, meeting a wolf, but not actually a wolf but a man trapped in a wolf’s body? Is he to be trusted, esPECially since he’s choosing more wolf-y types of behavior?
I did so enjoy this, with Chapman’s ability to pen tales with a language and style true to the time period he’s planted his stories in. Here, he’s given us a delightfully medieval tale, with the rhythm and language that seems ancient and wise whereas his novella Last Request showed a grand Victorian Gothic style.
Which has me gracelessly segueing into narration: Last Request was written very well with a truuuly frightful story, but the enTIRety of that was absolutely ruined by the narration. But here with Jannie Meisberger, I’m usually fairly confident she’ll be turning in a worthy performance. Indeed, she did The Great Contagion quite well. I shall have to ding her a bit here as she does the main narrative in a sort of sing-song(y) rhythm that sounds like she’s bored, and who likes that? That said and griped about, I CAN add that when it comes to the drama and action, when it comes to handling the variety of voices (Creatures and Can-They-Be-Trusted individuals abound!), she does really well. So? Huzzah for NOT being She Who Shall Remain Nameless.
Vastly entertaining and I do so hope that Chapman has many a sleepless night too busy writing the next in the series. I mean, he did NOT pull a Michael J. Sullivan and toss in a ridiculous cliffhanger, but he did indeed introduce a tale that can be continued, characters whose intentions are to be sussed out.
Bravo, I’m ridiculously enchanted by brave little Merliss and, dude! I feel her pain. It TOTally blows that cats can’t talk as I’m certain they’d have thrilling stories galore…!
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