Shaykitteh's World of Books

Imagine a dream - or nightmare - that you have after a late night D&D session. Every type of character possible is mentioned, and your party grows over the course of the story, often because a new person shows up during a battle... or at a diner/tavern. The action is so fast that you only learn the shallowest characteristics of who everyone is, but yet somehow at the end you solve the puzzle and beat the boss. Your dream is essentially a one night gaming campaign with two many characters and too much going on. It's D&D on crack.

That is a pretty good summary of Monkey Queen: Introductions and Abductions. Fairies? Check. Trolls? Check. Hobgoblins? Check. Humans dragged into the middle of a battle between mythological creatures? Check. Set on a college campus with portals to the Elvin lands? Check! The author even brought Puck in as a character. And Scylla. Now, I can see Puck, Robin Goodfellow himself, as this book is heavily influenced by the stories of European Fae, but Scylla?? She's a Greek Monster! On top of the characters introduced, we have the plot, which is ridden with subplots and hints of background stories that are never actually told, and everything is paced so frantically that you can never really figure out what is going on. And since you don't have a connection to the characters, you really don't care.

And this is only book one of the series.

On the positive side... I liked the cover.