C. J. Archer: The Last Necromancer

C.J. Archer starts a new series off with a girl in hiding for her special ability to raise the dead:


Fleet Foot Charlie has been living on the streets since her father threw her out 5 years ago, but tonight she was not a fleet footed as she should have been. In a cell with men who have horrible ideas on their mind, one man ends up dead and that is when her true abilities come to life and allow her to escape. But those in the cell with her do not remain silent, and soon there are people desperate to find her to help with their own agendas. Charlie doesn't know who to trust and how long she can keep pretending she's not the necromancer they seek and with Queen and Country at stake she will have to decide who she can trust.


This was a good read. It had some interesting aspects in it especially the further you get into the story I just think there was a bit too much time spent on attempting to figure out Charlie's secret, that she was not a boy but a girl. This aspects takes about half the book to be found out and it took away from the actual plot of someone wanting Charlie to help raise an undead army to attack the Queen. This leads to the incorporation of a classis horror story and I think that Archer did a good job at melding the two books together and having the events/ideas unfold in an interesting way. Book was darker than I expected it to be, which was a nice surprise. I mean I feel like a book like this should be darker with having an individual who can raise the dead.


I wish that we had more than Charlie's point of view. I liked Charlie as a character but I felt that this story was not as well rounded as it could have been if there had been another point of view. I think that Archer should have had some points of view from Fitzroy as he is also the main male lead in the book. He was also an interesting character, as he was raised from birth to be the leader of the Ministry of Curiosities. We do not get a true sense of Fitzroy in this book, but I will say he seems to have some abilities that are not entirely human so I look forward to discovering who/what he really is.


I appreciated that while there is what a school girl crush that Charlie has on Fitzroy, Archer does not really peruse this aspect in this book. I feel like a romance between the two would muddle the plot, and you do get more of an older brother feel from the male character to Charlie.


I'm interested in seeing where Archer takes this series and if she chooses to connect her stories with other classic novels. I also hope we get more exploration in to Charlies' abilities and have her use them more often (I guess I'm being morbid as this means people have to die for this to happen) but the true extent of her abilities goes unexplored in this book. So I will be looking to read the next book in this series.


Enjoy!!!

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