The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint by C. Dale Brittain
The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint is the second book in the Daimbert series. The first, A Bad Spell in Yurt, was a surprise stand-out hit with its gentle, "cozy fantasy" vibes, and I've been saving its predecessor for the right moment. After damn-near reading a love story about a woman and her adopted, shape-shifting son, the idea of something gentle and cozy appealed to me. So I headed back to the kingdom of Yurt.
Daimbert, the royal wizard of the Yurt, has had some time to mature since we last saw him. He's still a bit of a rapscallion, but it's more light-hearted, and he takes his job seriously. He loves Yurt and its people and wants to do right by them. Which is good—the king is planning a trip, and Daimbert, along with the Regent and the Chaplain, will be in charge while he's gone.
Naturally, things start to go sideways the moment the king steps off the page:
A duke reports unnatural creatures lumbering through the woods.
The previous court wizard might be losing his mind in dangerous ways.
An enigmatic man shrouded in mystery has captured the Duchess's eye.
The Chaplain is beset by parochial drama that, separately, involves magical creatures, unethical capitalism, and the incomprehensible desires of saints.
The Duchess has hired her own court magician, a young wizard fresh out of school who doesn't seem capable of anything other than causing problems.
If "cozy" stories revolve around one primary mystery—and it's my understanding that's how they normally work—I was somewhat flummoxed by the scope of the problems Daimbert faces. There were too many threads. How is it possible to bring them together neatly?
There was a more significant problem, though: the new wizard, whose name I've completely forgotten. I expect he's supposed to be a foil to the freshly matured Daimbert and a call-back to when Daimbert was a touch less dedicated to his kingdom, but it didn't work for me.
First off, He's a pain in Daimbert's ass pretty much every step of the way, from taking Daimbert's things without asking to behaving recklessly and dangerously for no good reason. As far as I can tell, he has no redeeming qualities.
Daimbert is also occasionally a pain in the ass. Still, we get to see him feeling insecure, or trying to reconcile his strange friendship with the Chaplain, or doing his best only for it to fail spectacularly. We know that Daimbert's not charging around the kingdom going, "Eh, fuck everyone else, I'm going to do exactly what I want to do." I can't say the same about backup-wizard.
I could have dealt with this annoying wizard a lot better if I had something substantial plot-point to latch onto, but everything felt a bit piecemeal. Daimbert's dashing across the kingdom to track eerie creatures only to run back to the old wizard's place and then skip back to the castle before taking off again. The scope never seems to narrow and bring the plots together; everything is its own thing. This feels like a major sin in the cozy genre, but I still wondered if Brittain would somehow blow me away in the home stretch with each puzzle piece falling perfectly into place.
The most interesting part of the novel is the wood nymph. Before you get too excited, though, I feel the need to warn you that the cranky saint isn't actually present in the book. This really put a damper on my dreams of the nymph playing colorful pranks of the saint. Still, the wood nymph highlights Brittain's ability to weave modern religion with fantasy to a thought-provoking and delightful effect.
It doesn't last long, though. All too soon, she fades into the background and Daimbert continues to be confused about what's happening, what he should be doing, and how everything is connected.
Things come to a head, as they must, but this sudden climax feels a little out of left field. It revolves around an interesting enough topic—mortality—but it needs to be explored before page 200-something of a 200-something page book. Then, in the wrap-up/denouement , we finally get answers to all the questions, and it's exactly what I feared:
Yurt's problems are incidental and individual; the connection between them is specious at best and filled with plot holes. There's never that beautiful moment when everything comes together, leaving you gaping at the intricacy of the plot. And with everything feeling so slapdash, it doesn't end on that cozy, gentle vibe that I expected. I just kinda scratched my head and went, "uh, okay."
Aside from the wood nymph and Daimbert's occasional interactions with the Chaplain, I don't think there's much I can look back on with fondness. I'm willing to keep going with Daimbert, hoping Brittain finds the genius she wielded with A Bad Spell in Yurt, but if this were the first Daimbert novel I read, I wouldn't continue.
Cover art by Dean Morrissey:
