Gale Women series by Tanya Huff

Review of Gale Women by Tanya Huff, including The Enchantment Emporium, The Wild Ways and The Future Falls. The Gale Women series is an urban fantasy series that tells the family saga of the Gale family. The stories is about finding your own path in a sprawling family with strong opinions about what you should be doing with your life. Queer sex positive books with dragons, magic and selkies.

My review from 2014 of The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff

Title:  The Enchantment Emporium
Author: Tanya Huff
Series: Gale Women
Genre: Urban Fantasy

This is definitely a hidden gem. I have never heard anyone discuss it and I found it by accident browsing Audible. I had not read anything by Tanya Huff before but I know that she is getting recognition in the community – she won the Auroras Award for Best Novel 2013 for The Silvered and after reading this book I want to read more of her.

I read The Enchantment Emporium back in 2010 and last week I picked up the second book in Audible, but after listening to the first hour I realised that I had to re-hear the first book to get anything out of the second on (I was ill as well so that didn’t help my memory).

 So I remembered this being an awesome book all about family and magic and not much else about it. And it is definitely all about magic and family. I don’t think I have ever read an urban fantasy book where family played this strong a role.

The story

The story is about Alysha who moves away from her family to run a junk store and figure out what happened to her grandmother. She quickly gets involved in big strange plot in the city, because things are happening in Calgary.

The story is told primarily from Alysha’s point of view, but we sometimes shift to other people’s points of view, like her cousin and a local reporter for a tabloid. The story moves along quickly and sucked me in both because of the strange plot and because of the interesting setting.

The characters

Alysha is part of the Gale family, that is a big family of witches run by the woman with fewer but very magically powerful men. The Aunties runs things and the woman definitely have the upper hand power-wise. They do magic by drawing charms and they cook a lot of food. They are constantly eating in this book – I had to get hold of cookies to listen to this!

The other supernaturals in this settings are different types of fay, sorcerer and dragons. Which always makes me happy.

Romance

There is a nice romance plot on the side as well, but it never overshadows the plot itself. Many urban fantasy romance plots makes you want to hit the protagonist in the face, this isn’t one of those. Alysha knows what she wants and is quite straightforward about it. The whole family is very open about sex and while Alysha is mostly into men, she is definitely a bisexual and the story never punish her for that – it don’t even complicate her relationship to the straight man she is interested in – which I find really refreshing. There is a lot of talking about sex, but no actual sex scenes.

As a reader I could see that the antagonist, a  sorcerer, is probably bad to the core, but the people in the story who is only presented part of his actions sees him in way more shades of grey. And his motives are understandable, even if they are not sympathetic at all. I love that he is a 3 dimensional person and not a monster or a villain.

Though the story Alysha grows a lot as a person and she figures out who she is, what her place in the world is and how to stand up to the aunties. The book might be all about family but it is also a book very much about power dynamics and about power.

Easter eggs

Another thing that I quite enjoyed in this book is all the pop culture references that is woven in as a part of the dialog – it is just fun. I love it when authors don’t underestimate their readers. Of course we get Star Wars references and of course we know the Dresden Files. It is one of those little things that spices things up. So yeah.

The story is definitely worth reading, it isn’t your typical Angry Trousers urban fantasy but it is definitely urban fantasy and good urban fantasy to boot.

The stats: The Enchantment Emporium

Published: 2009 by DAW
Length: 361 pages
Read: 2 times. Once in December 07 to 08, 2010 and the second time January 18 to 20 2014

The author: Female, white, Canada
The protagonist: Alysha Gale, bisexual, white, witch, owner of a junk shop, able-bodied.
Setting: Calgary, Canada, present day

My review from 2014 of The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff

Title:  The Wild Ways

Sex positive and queer

I want to start by saying that I loved that the protagonist, not just one of the side characters, is on the quiltbag spectrum. Charlie is bisexual with a leaning towards preferring men. She is also not at all monogamous and very casual about sex, which is a very liberating thing to see in a protagonist. Oh and it never gets her into any kind of trouble. Tanya Huff, thank you for writing a three dimensional bisexual woman who does not get shamed or punished for her sexuality. The only person who ever thinks it strange is a selkie who is also ageless and very old. Charlie is not the only queer character in the book either, she is in a polyamorous relationship Alysha and Alysha’s boyfriend and one of the band members in Charlie’s band is gay.

While the first book is centered around Alysha, the second book has Charlie as the central character. And yes Charlie is a woman. She is one of the minor point of view characters in the first book. In this second book her cousin Jack, the dragon prince from the first book is the other major point of view character. He is 14 and is trying to figure out his place in his new family while he also tries to figure out who he is and how he feels about Earth. Jack finding his identity and place in the world is a major subplot and one that I quite enjoyed.

The music

The Wild Ways is very much about the celtic music scene on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada where Charlie joins a band that plays in a musical festival over the summer. The dynamic of the band and music play a big part of the background of the book and there are a lot of music references – that I didn’t get, I am not really into celtic alt-rock music. If I had not been reading it as an audiobook I might have found a celtic rock radio station to listen to while reading.

Dragons and selkies

The first book had dragons as their main supernatural player, the second one is on the selkie band wagon. Many modern selkie stories had them cast as the victims, but selkies of The Wild Ways are very much in control of their own destiny. They exchange their land-men so they became very accepting of the supernatural and the weird and very much in love with their selkie-women. It would however not really be a selkie story if they had not lost their skin and this is where the main plot starts. An oil company is holding their skin hostage to make a selkie-backed environmentalist group back off a shallow water oil well that is to be built near the island. Charlie decides that since her aunt Catherine had stolen the skins it is up to Charlie to get them back. All the while she is playing in her band of course.

Overall review

I really liked the story and the characters of the book. The musicians are all lovely characters that though they don’t get a lot of page-time feel very much like fully fleshed characters.  There is of course some awesome banter and snark all around. The action is fun and interesting. Oh and there is a cage troll. Like in the first book there is a lot of pop culture references, which is awesome – the cage troll is one of them. And it is altogether an enjoyable and entertaining read. I hope there will be more stories in the series. I would love to know more of the Gale family. Definitely recommended.

The stats: The Wild Ways

Published: 2011 by DAW
Length: 295 pages
Read: January 18 to 24, 2014

The protagonist: Charlie Gale, bisexual, white, witch, musician, able-bodied.
Setting: Calgary, Canada, present day

My review from 2014 of The Future Falls by Tanya Huff

Title: The Future Falls

The Gale Girls series is one of my favourite urban fantasy series because of it’s themes of family and because of the fact that is just so darn well written. Huff has written some of the first urban fantasy books that is clearly recognizable as such, the Vicki Nelson books.

The Future Falls is the last installment and it is really wonderful. It is rare that I rate books 5 stars but this is one of those.

The Gale Girls series is something as rare in urban fantasy as a family saga. And it has awesome music, a dragon, family, friends and did I mention a extermination event.

“Life isn’t a Michael Bay movie.” “Usually, that’s a good thing.”

And we find out that life isn’t a Michael Bay movie – normally that is a good thing, but what do you do when a giant rock is bound to hit earth pretty darn soon? Did I mention dragon? Ok I did, now why are you not reading it? I read it pretty much in one sitting – I was unable to put it down.

And just an awesome quote:

“And we’re screwed either way. Twenty-one months, big hunk of rock, bam, extinction event.” “Bam?” “Scientifically speaking.” LOL

The Future Falls by Tanya Huff

The stats: The Future Falls

Published: November 4, 2014 by DAW
Length: 336 pages
Read: November 9-12 2014

This review was originally posted: January 22 – 26, 2014. Updated and edited June 28, 2023