Title: Changeling Author: Yasmine Galenorn Year: 2007 Publisher: Berkley Reviewer: Jake Beal This is the book I've been dreading writing the review for. In fact, I've written three other reviews while putting off finishing this book. And in the end? I couldn't do it. Ms. Galenorn's "Changeling" joins Mr. Forbeck's devastatingly bad "Blood Bowl" in the dubious honor of being reviewed without being entirely read. What's this, you say? How could I make it through the entirety of "Stealth Planet," a book so badly written that I had to give it the finger to continue reading, yet be unable to finish this book? In truth, "Changeling" is nowhere near as bad as "Stealth Planet." And that, dear reader, is the heart of the problem. "Stealth Planet," like a bloody car crash, was hard to tear one's eyes away from. "Changeling," on the other hand, was more like being stuck in a traffic jam for hours, unmoving, next to a billboard advertising a strip club. Every once in a while, you lurch forward a few feet, but then everything stops again and you're sitting there, wishing desperately that you could be somewhere else. But there you are, staring up at this hideous looming image of something that's supposed to be sexy, but ends up just being tacky and a little bit queasy. Ms. Galenorn's story was like that. Lots of things happen---in fact, a whole herd of extruded standard-grade urban fantasy plot points come galloping at you, yet they're so unimaginative that it's as though nothing is happening at all. As one reads it, the plot cliches just keep on coming, mixed indiscriminately with bad romance novel prose and gender stereotypes: somewhere out there is a "Degath Team" of horrible demons who are looking for N seals that can bring about the end of the world, and the normal guardians can't do anything about it so everything is up to our plucky team of three misfits and the half-dozen or so gorgeous boy-toys that are attached to them and their incredible half-Fae sex-drives, and there's were-spiders who are horrible corruptions of everything noble about beast-people, and they're menacing the noble tribe of puma shape-shifters over by Mt. Ranier, whose representative makes Our Heroine melt into a lustful puddle of cat lust over the musky musk that his manliness emits, thereby causing her to angst about how she wants to screw his brains out even though she's getting a steady diet of awesome sex already from her hunky boyfriend, Mr. Detective, whose skills are of course needed on the case so that she ends up often sitting in the same room as both of them, watching them growl territorially over her while angsting about the fact that her incredible half-Fae sex drive means that she can barely keep from tearing their clothes off, and besides that there's these other super-powerful beings that can take on the form of gorgeous human men that she and her sisters will have to have sex with if they want to save the world. Oh, and don't forget about shopping! It really is that bad. Like I said, I couldn't finish it. I got just over halfway through and quit. I guess I'll never find out how many sex scenes it takes to save the world. What a pity. Don't read this book unless you've finished all your Laurell K. Hamilton and haven't yet satisfied your need for were-critter porn.