{"id":4387,"date":"2022-03-19T07:57:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T14:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4387"},"modified":"2022-03-19T07:57:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-19T14:57:06","slug":"gigi-pandian-under-lock-and-skeleton-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/gigi-pandian-under-lock-and-skeleton-key\/","title":{"rendered":"Gigi Pandian: Under Lock and Skeleton Key"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This first novel in a new series from Gigi Pandian is so rich, so stuffed with character, plot and setting, it takes a moment to absorb everything the intelligent Pandian is throwing at you.\u00a0 She expects you, the reader, to hit the ground running.\u00a0 Her main character, Tempest Raj, is a magician and illusionist whose career has been crushed by a spectacular failure onstage in Las Vegas, and she\u2019s back home reconsidering her life.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s from a family of magicians and illusionists, and there\u2019s a longstanding family curse: the eldest child dies by magic.\u00a0 Tempest has lost a string of relatives, most recently her beloved aunt and her mother (who were known as \u201cThe Selkie Sisters\u201d), and Tempest\u2019s grandparents and her father are extra careful of her as they don\u2019t want her to be next.<\/p>\n

Her father runs a company called Secret Staircase Construction \u2013 they add witty hidden rooms and staircases at the request of a homeowner.\u00a0 At the moment they are working on an old Victorian recently acquired by a man and his young son.\u00a0 The day Tempest visits the construction site, a dead body \u2013 resembling Tempest \u2013 comes tumbling out of the wall.\u00a0 It\u2019s not Tempest, of course, but her former, lookalike assistant, and the discovery of her body leads to many, many questions.<\/p>\n

While this book is at once an almost fey look at the tricks and secret construction of the houses her father works on as well as her own family homestead, Hidden Creek, it\u2019s also a peeling back of the layers of Tempest\u2019s backstory.\u00a0 As the story proceeds, the reader is given more information, and the details of the loss of Tempest\u2019s mother as well as the crashing of Tempest\u2019s career become more clear and more and more fascinating.<\/p>\n

However, this book is also a loving homage to the locked room mystery \u2013 Pandian specifically references John Dickson Carr\u2019s classic, The Three Coffins, <\/em><\/a>as well as detailing Carr\u2019s explanations for a seemingly impossible discovery of a body in a locked room.\u00a0 The body that falls out of the wall should not have fallen out of walls that were basically untouched and sound but somehow \u2013 it did.\u00a0 Tempest uses her smarts and a little bit of magical misdirection to get to a solution.<\/p>\n

Tempest is truly a wonderful creation.\u00a0 She\u2019s young, she\u2019s figuring out her life (always a good thing at the start of a series), she\u2019s an illusionist who bases her illusions on the telling of stories, and she\u2019s surrounded by interesting people.\u00a0 Her family, an odd combination of Scots and Indian (there are some great mash up recipes at the back of the book), is an even richer creation.\u00a0 The whole thing is fertile soil for a long and interesting series.\u00a0 I loved her nod to and reverence for the classics \u2013 not a shallow love on her part, but a deep one \u2013 it held my interest and made me appreciate this odd and precious book all the more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This first novel in a new series from Gigi Pandian is so rich, so stuffed with character, plot and setting, it takes a moment to absorb everything the intelligent Pandian is throwing at you.\u00a0 She expects you, the reader, to hit the ground running.\u00a0 Her main character, Tempest Raj, is a magician and illusionist whose … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[800,802,401,100,803,801],"class_list":["post-4387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-gigi-pandian","tag-john-dickson-carr","tag-locked-room","tag-minotaur-books","tag-secret-staircase","tag-under-lock-and-skeleton-key"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4391,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions\/4391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}