I picked this up as a way to give Roux a chance to redeem herself, show me what she could do with a story solely of her own making. She kind of failed.
The Gravedigger’s Brawl is about the lead curator at a history museum and a bartender at a gaslight/Victorian themed bar and the spooky things they encounter while trying not to fall in love. Again, she delivers a good plot with great details and interesting characters, but there’s still something missing. This time it’s a matter of belief. It all happened entirely too fast. The level of trust these people had amongst them was just bizarre. The whole story couldn’t have covered more than a month’s time, two at the most, and this is from the time the two main characters met until the end of the story. Add to that, the person that introduced them had only known the bartender for a short time and you’ve really got no foundation for how close they all were. Honestly, there’s no way in the world a business owner would give a key to his business to someone he’d only been dating for a few weeks. And then, the ending was just… It’s just ridiculous. But like I said, good plot. If the players had known each other longer, it would have been a great read, but that wasn’t the case, so I’m complaining. Additionally, Roux’s default method of expressing familiarity between characters is to have them sling derogatory language at each other and it was shamelessly on display. And that did nothing but make me uncomfortable.
So this is it for me and her solo efforts. I’d drop her completely because I’d rather not support her, but I’d be lying if I said I was going to do it. If I wasn’t so invested in the characters from Cut & Run…
