They Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe
I would like to thank Solaris for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Solaris
Published – Out now
Price – £10.99 paperback £5.99 ebook
Kea Petrova is dealing with more than her fair share of trouble.
At just twenty-five years old, she’s the youngest of the five Hawaiian clan leaders living on the Homestead in outer Los Angeles, following catastrophic flooding that destroyed their islands.
Kea struggles to keep her small clan afloat, scraping rent together through odd jobs and selling the Hawaiian-language spells she crafts. Life is difficult enough, but the murder of Angelo Reyes—a prominent LA activist—turns her world upside-down.
Angelo was killed by a death spell—something that can only be created in Hawaiian—so Kea quickly becomes the prime suspect, known for her unique spellwork. To clear her name, she must unravel the mystery behind Angelo’s murder and confront LA’s most powerful players, all while under the supervision of a dangerously attractive guard. The clock is ticking—can Kea save herself, her clan, and the Homestead before it’s too late?
If you read a lot, you can sometimes spot the type of story you’re now reading. Certain plotlines drive certain types of tale. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Think of how music uses notes and creates massively different tunes, but you can start to realise where this music fits with other pieces. The risk is that you can read so many types of a certain story then you get a little unsurprised. What I love though is when an author finds a new angle on a certain sub-genre. One that makes you go ‘Huh, I didn’t know you could that with this one’. Shay Kauwe got me doing just that in their sparking fantasy debut The Killing Spell that combines a pacy sharp fantasy mystery to solve, innovative setting with a really interesting look at the topics of cultures being assimilated, integrated or even destroyed.
The flood changed the world a few hundred years ago. Hawaii was swallowed by the rising oceans and survivors this are dispersed with many other groups now living on the borders of a much reshaped LA. Fortunately people still have access to magic. Kea Petrova though while the Head of her family struggles to control her magic often causing as much trouble for her as saving her. Undercover spelling deals pays the daily bills, but Kea is very worried to find LA’s Board comprising the more respectable and acceptable groups of magical communities have summoned her to meet them. A promising leader fighting for the recognition of his community by the Board has been killed and there are signs the Hawaiian language was used in the spell that killed him. To prevent her Homestead being invaded Kea agrees to investigate but finds all the key members of the Board want to know more about her and great danger is getting very close.
The first thing I really clicked with was just how skilled and pacy the storytelling is. Kea is our first-person narrator, and Kauwe achieves a great balance of making us understand Kea world and wider situation lightly, knowing when to share what is relevant for the chapter while also making the information interesting enough that it never feels a clumpy infodump. The wider world of a ruined America and yet one filled with magic (and even monsters) gets set up very quickly and Kea explains all the problems she has to deal with – cash shortages, unruly family members, magic seeking monsters and an uneasy truce with LA on their doorstep that has already brought the family a lot of pain. While a heroine solving a magical murder mystery is not new, here the world is one of powerful families, if not warring but certainly antagonistic cultural groups and for this reader an exploration of Hawaiian culture and beliefs that kept me engaged from the start.
This is very helped by Kea’s character investing us. I really warmed to Kesa very much a young woman sorting herself out having unexpectedly come into heading her family, working multiple jobs, juggling bills, family issues and a lack of belief that her own magic will ever behave. At the same time she is smart, independent and thinks on her feet. We initially see her act on the Homestead before she then runs the gauntlet in LA. This means we have a chance to know she is no complete wide-eyed newcomer. Then Kauwe builds the cast up and the Board is full of prideful, powerful and indeed rich people who all seem to have their own angles and potential motives for murder. Two really interesting characters to watch out for are Charles the arrogant and yet incredibly determined Board member who has the most antagonistic run ins with Kea and the more ambiguous Sora. Charles is annoying privileged and often a few steps ahead of everyone else. Sora is sarcastic, a loner and annoys Kea on sight. Yes, their relationship is one with lots of friction and indeed chemistry on the page. The sparring is fun to read and explores both characters and how they interact with the world too. Kauwe knows when to add humour, emotion and action to all their scenes and they’re extremely fun to read
Again, this is not too unusual in the genre, but what really stands out is how Sauwe weaves explorations of culture and acceptance into the story. LA is indeed a mix of culture (Kea herself has Russian and Hawaiian ancestor and traditions) yet here we see hierarchies have developed and those with languages deemed ‘recognised’ gain power while those the Board sees as more basic or hold beliefs that feel more superstitious are sidelined. The Board only allows members who are recognises. The story has a rich and subtle exploration of how not all cultures are viewed equally in a society and what that means when one group is getting subsumed into the noise of modern life. We see Families that have already given up their spells for a more LA style life at the cost of losing precious family magic and while this is very much a world where language drives the spells we get an exploration of how languages are complicated (Hawaiian is felt simple being a much smaller alphabet but that is because most communities do not understand the complexity of the actual language) which makes the spellcasting unusual in this world. This device is also a way of showing how people can feel they’re slowly losing the world and traditions that you’ve grown up with, a culture that has centuries of storytelling and traditions to it is being eroded and not recognised as having value. Those are the moments giving the story real depth, raising thoughtful issues and perspectives that really serve the story’s plot in ways that grabbed my attention.
The Killing Spell is both a delightful fast paced fantasy adventure but is also smart fantasy that uses its world and character to make serious observations about our world and how it judges other cultures. Kauwe leaves room to return to this fascinating world in other stories which I would be there for, and I am certainly very interested in what stories Shay Kauwe has to tell us about in the future. Strongly recommended!
