SUPERNATURAL BEINGS 1

A pair of rival magicians fall for the same girl in Kouam’s debut YA fantasy novel.

Seventeen-year-old Hero may look human, but he’s not; he’s a supernatural being called a tiger magician. Unbeknownst to humans, all supernatural beings are intent on destroying humanity due to an atrocity that people committed against them over a century ago. After a civil war in the tiger realm, Hero and his rival, Prince, decide to renew their conflict with humans by crossing over into the human realm. Once there, Prince is almost struck by a car but is saved at the last minute by a human woman named Angel. Prince later tells Hero that Angel is special: She “has a smell that is different from the smell of the race of natural human beings.” Prince quickly develops romantic feelings for Angel while Hero starts a relationship with her friend Bella—although though there’s some apparent chemistry between Angel and Hero, as well. A love triangle ensues between Hero, Prince, and Angel, distracting both supernatural beings from their mission. It seems inevitable that, when Angel is threatened, one of the heroes will end up betraying his people. Although the book essentially feels likes a Twilight knockoff—there’s even a character named Bella—Kouam demonstrates a good deal of imagination in the mythology surrounding the supernatural beings. However, the book is seriously hampered by the quality of the prose, which can border on unreadable: “The supernatural beings were the creatures who had the phantoms called again ghosts, and their ghosts were the animals who they were, and the supernatural beings born with ten senses and with a lot of abilities, and their language was Latin.” Readers should be able to suss out the key facts, but it’s not an enjoyable task, and the picture that Kouam finally paints feels only half finished. The fictional world lacks detail and the characters lack depth, and the end result is a reading experience that’s disappointingly unmagical.

A chaotic and unpolished fantasy effort.