The Phoenix Keeper - S.A. MacLean - ★★

AUTHOR: S.A. MacLean

NARRATOR: Stephanie Bentley

GENRE: Cosy Fantasy

PUBLICATION DATE: August 13, 2024

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: Officially, a cosy fantasy with shades of queer romance. Practically, a YA fantasy with a whiny, immature main character and minimal appearance of the promised lesbian-love track. I would have gone easier on this book were it actually a YA novel to compensate for my lack of affinity for the genre. However, it is promoted as an adult fantasy and hence I cannot suppress my disappointment. The magical creatures and Tanya saved the book from a lower rating. This is an outlier opinion.

Plot Preview:

Aila has been fascinated by phoenix birds since her childhood visit to the zoo. At present, she is living her dream job as the head phoenix keeper at a zoo focussed on saving endangered magical creatures and creating awareness. The only problem is that there hasn’t been a successful phoenix breeding programme in her zoo in almost a decade.

When there is a heist at a nearby zoo with the phoenix mother and hatchlings stolen, Aila knows that her run-down zoo must step up to the challenge if the beautiful creatures are to be saved. As she hated most people with all her heart, she knows she can count on fellow keeper Tanya for help. But can just the two of them manage such a gargantuan responsibility? She must, especially when her college rival and current colleague Luciana is always ready to laugh at her incompetence.

The story comes to us in Aila’s third-person perspective.

Had the story been exactly as I have written above, it would have crossed the four-star mark. However, the main character, the straightforward plot, and the pseudo-YA writing style ensured that my rating didn’t come near 3 stars even once throughout.

Bookish Yays:

🦄 All the magical creatures! Phoenix, dragon, griffin, kelpie, unicorn… So many amazing animals! Every scene with them was a treat!

🦄 Tanya, a trans woman and Aila’s best friend and fellow keeper: Possibly the only sensible main character in the book. I also liked Aila’s parents, Tanya’s boyfriend, and Maria in their limited roles.

🦄 Though I have mixed feelings about zoos in general (love to watch animals, hate to see animals encaged or forced to perform), I appreciate how the book highlighted the positive role zoos can play, especially in spreading awareness and implementing conservation strategies for endangered species. There is also a depiction of the entitled behaviour displayed by zoo visitors – annoyingly accurate.

🦄 The fantasy world with magical creatures existing in the same universe as DVDs, emails and corporate bureaucracy. It’s a quirky but enjoyable mix of two such distinct settings.

🦄 Love the way inclusivity is handled in this book. Tanya is a transwoman and Aila is bisexual. But both these points aren’t hammered in our head with in-your-face explanations or overly detailed backstories. Their respective gender identity and sexual preference is woven into the writing casually as part of a scene. This is the best kind of inclusive writing - making it natural for a fictional character to be trans/bi, no justifications or history required.

Bookish Nays:

🦎 Aila is in her mid-to-late twenties, but she is whinier than any teen I know. She is also annoying, judgemental, self-absorbed, and rude. In short, she is a typical YA FMC. The problem is that this book isn’t a YA Fantasy. I absolutely don’t mind having unlikeable leads as these allow a story to have more depth. But it is always better to see such characters eat humble pie and improve steadily over the course of the book. Aila stays the same almost throughout. The writing seems to be aiming at making her sound cute but it fails. The problem is exacerbated because of the writing coming to us from her perspective. The only positive thing I have to say about Aila is that her passion for animals is sincere.

🦎 Aila is shown to be an introvert in the extreme sense, with a strong hatred for people and public interactions. However, her social and professional anxiety is depicted negatively, so it is tough to feel for Aila’s struggle as it comes off more as disdain than apprehension.

🦎 Aila’s third-person narration has plenty of rambling, and to make matters worse, the rambling is always about the same topics. Exasperating and boring! One thing I especially hated was how she always referred to Luciana as ‘the witch’ – how immature!

🦎 The writing in general is also repetitive. The first 20% or so is entirely focussed on showing us various magical creatures (no complaints about this!), Aila's aversion to humans, her stage fright, and her love for animals. But even ahead, when the plot has moved on, we still get regular servings of these same points. Oh, and I cannot forget the overdose of ‘mango’ mentions we get whenever Luciana is around. (Someone with access to the digital copy: Please do me a solid and let me know how many times the word ‘mango’ is used in connection with Luciana!)

🦎 I should have seen that tiny tagline on the cover: "Falling in love never burned so bright." Though the plot is about saving the phoenix, the focus is equally on Aila’s romance. As I didn’t care about Aila, I also didn’t care a hoot about her love life, all the more as it was based on the most frivolous reason.

🦎 The blurb promises us a soul-restoring queer romance. So it is unexpected to see Aila carrying a torch for a white straight man for more than half of the book. The actual queer relationship is barely there. Moreover, even when Aila is pining for the male character, we already know that we shouldn’t root for them, thanks to the blurb’s advance notice about a queer relationship. Way to go, blurb-writer!

🦎 It is so easy to guess the identity of the antagonist! There is no subtlety in the plot development in this respect. The problem is that the characters in the book don’t figure out the villain until much later, so it is a long, long wait till common sense pops up.

🦎 I could have still said that this book might work better for YA readers as they would be able to relate better to Aila. But the overabundance of cuss words puts a stop to this thought. There was absolutely no need for such language in this book, especially as it is supposed to be a cosy read. No situation merited the regular f-bombs.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 14 hrs 10 min, is narrated by Stephanie Bentley. Her narration is enthusiastic, probably a bit too peppy for my taste especially when the protagonist was the opposite of peppy. She gets some of the emotions right, especially her depiction of Aila’s whiny rambling. But some of the trickier pitches such as yelling or whispering seemed a bit hit-or-miss. It is quite possible that my dislike of Aila spilled over into my dislike of the narration, so don’t pay heed to my grumbling. If you still want to try the book, the audio version is definitely a good option to go ahead with.

All in all, the intent was great but the execution needed more finetuning. I loved the creatures but disliked most of the humans.

Had this been marketed as a YA Fantasy, I might have turned a blind eye to some of the flaws, as flat characters, rambling and guessable plots are a hallmark of most YA works. But as this is promoted as a cosy fantasy, I cannot ignore the shortcomings. It is disappointing that most of the characters aren’t sensible adults. The repetitiveness and the predictability added to the downturn.

This is a debut work, so I hate that it went so poorly for me, but sometimes, it can’t be helped. On the positive side, the book does get the creatures, the passion (for animals, not fellow humans), the importance of conservation, and the worldbuilding right. That’s a good start.

Recommended to older YA and NA readers, I guess. They are used to such characters anyway. And mine is anyway an outlier opinion so please do read the other positive reviews and take a better call on this work.

My thanks to Hachette Audio for providing the ALC of “The Phoenix Keeper” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. Sorry this didn’t work out better.