Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge starts fast and fun, when new business grad Bailey Chen is attacked as she walks home from her job as a bar back. Luckily she drank a screwdriver before leaving because her attackers were monsters – tremens – and the screwdriver – when made just exactly perfectly – imparts super strength.
Barkeepers are magicians who keep the world safe from monsters and get their super powers by mixing cocktails exactly right and using pure ingredients. They are members of the Cupbearers, dedicated to keeping the world safe from tremens and use the Obvlinum to erase memories from us non-barkeepers. (Presumably they make the drinks slightly wrong when serving to us regular customers.)
New idea, yes! Great concept, unfortunately the rest of the book fell a bit short.
Once past the opener, Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge read like YA fiction, with Bailey, her high school best friend Zane, and Zane’s girlfriend Mona the mysterious, forming a love triangle. In between they serve drinks and fight monsters and worry about the politics in the bar keeping hierarchy.
I didn’t like the characters. Bailey got As in high school and college by memorizing and makes flash cards about the company that she’s interviewing for a business job. She doesn’t know what she wants to be, only what she wants to own (apartment in trendy but cheap part of town), and as she herself put it, is a teenager grown old, not an adult.
Zane was on again/off again, inconsistent in loyalty and love, self-centered. The other characters were equally boring and a politically correct mix of genders and backgrounds. None seemed to exhibit particularly high moral standards or interest in much beyond food, sex, drinking and killing monsters.
The most interesting parts of Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge were the drink recipes and tidbits culled from the barkeeper’s manual, The Devil’s Water Dictionary. These snippets had the same fun, tongue in cheek feel as the opening scene.
3 Stars. The concept is 4 stars, original and could be fun, the teenage angst and modest characterization are distracting enough to warrant the lower rating.
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