Review: The Veil

Yzabel / August 27, 2015

The Veil (Devil's Isle, #1)The Veil by Chloe Neill

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Seven years ago, the Veil that separates humanity from what lies beyond was torn apart, and New Orleans was engulfed in a supernatural war. Now, those with paranormal powers have been confined in a walled community that humans call the District. Those who live there call it Devil’s Isle.

Claire Connolly is a good girl with a dangerous secret: she’s a Sensitive, a human endowed with magic that seeped through the Veil. Claire knows that revealing her skills would mean being confined to Devil’s Isle. Unfortunately, hiding her power has left her untrained and unfocused.

Liam Quinn knows from experience that magic makes monsters of the weak, and he has no time for a Sensitive with no control of her own strength. But when he sees Claire using her powers to save a human under attack—in full view of the French Quarter—Liam decides to bring her to Devil’s Isle and the teacher she needs, even though getting her out of his way isn’t the same as keeping her out of his head.

But when the Veil threatens to shatter completely, Claire and Liam must work together to stop it, or else New Orleans will burn…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I’ve only read the beginning of Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series, so I’m far from beginning an expert when it comes to her writing. Nevertheless, I definitely wanted to lay my hand on the beginning of this new series, as the premise clearly looked interesting.

And it is, both when it comes to what’s going on in New Orleans itself as to what’s happening behind, let’s say, other scenes as well. On the one side, the humans, trying to eke out a living in a city they don’t want to give up on and leave because, well, it’s *their* city, Veil or not. Containment as well as a couple of private contractors and other bounty hunters do their best to keep in check the resident Paranormals, stranded here after the Veil between their respective worlds closed during the war a few years ago. But are the “Paras”, as they’re nicknamed, so evil and threatening, or simply beings who mourn the loss of their own home?

I liked that things weren’t so black and white as they seemed at first. The Devil’s Isle is both a prison and a refuge, a temporary (or maybe not so much temporary) home, where angels, demons, fae and other creatures have to remain, cut from their magic and forbidden to use what’s left of it. As for Containment, it’s a very ambiguous organisation in its own rights: protecting humans, sure, but perhaps not doing as much as they could and should do regarding certain things. These things being notably the wraiths, humans sensitive to magic, whose powers were awakened by the ripping of the Veil, and who turn into mindless killing monsters after a while because of that very energy they were never supposed to touch in the first place. So once captured, they get locked up in Devil’s Isle… just as normal, still-human Sensitives are as well. And since they’re not allowed to do magic, they can’t expel what’s in them, and so they turn to wraiths, and… Not good, not good.

Pretty interesting for me, with the promise of hidden agendas, potential turncoats, unveiling of secrets, more knowledge about what’s going on behind the Veil, and so on.

However, what didn’t make this a better read for me were the characters: they’re merely “OK”, with a budding romance between Liam and Claire that felt somehow… typical of a lot of urban fantasy novels, without the added chemistry that would make it more palatable. These characters in general aren’t bad, just mostly sketched out rather than filled in, and as a result, I didn’t care that much about them. No special repartee and witty dialogue, no one particularly rising above the lot, so to speak.

The novel also felt more like an introduction than a real story, with a lot of it devoted to setting up the backdrop. It was good for world-building, but less good when it came to the plot itself, whose resolution came too fast after a few chapters I generally found less interesting.

I rate this book between “it’s OK” and “I like it”. I’d kind of like to know what happens next, yet more because of what briefly appeared behind the Veil, of what’s going to happen with Containment, than because of the characters themselves. 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 for now.