The Serpent - Sarah Fine (2018)

 "I've never been in a duel where my opponent's first play was to throw a giant dildo at me."

This was the first book I read from Sarah Fine that was not part of The Impostor Queen series, which I absolutely adored, so I had pretty high expectations for it. Some of those were fulfilled, some were exceeded, but in the end I was still left a bit disappointed. For one thing, I didn’t do my research properly and I expected the book to be YA, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the protagonist was actually late twenties/early thirties (not sure her exact age was ever stated), and as such much more relatable to me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with YA literature: I still read my fair share of it, and there are truly some gems to be found in the genre (see the aforementioned The Impostor Queen), but I’ve been burned one too many times by your typical „YA romance-disguised-as-fantasy with one-note characters” kind of books to be vary when I encounter yet another one.

One pretty huge thing The Serpent has going for it is its originality. Sure, it’s urban fantasy, but its universe is not populated by your usual vampires, werewolves, sorcerers, etc. There’s only one quasi-supernatural people here, the co-called Immortal Dealers: ordinary folk given the power to influence everything from small family squabbles to significant world events, using only a deck of cards and its corresponding animal spirit. That’s a pretty damn interesting concept, and any misgivings I might have about the effectiveness of such a power  - like the fact that in order to achieve anything with the cards you have to think of a working combination, imagine the result you want, find the cards in your deck, and either swipe them at the opponent or throw them away, but in any case it takes time, you know? – well, I just kept imagining how damn cool all that would look in a movie, and I found myself okay with it. 

Other than the Dealers, their boss, the Forger, and some vague mentions about how they influenced certain conflicts throughout history, there’s not a ton of worldbuilding to be found. In fact, what gets the most attention from the author is the cards themselves: there’s 54 in a deck and for some reason every single one of them (well, the ones that get played in the story, anyway) gets described thus: „She found the Healing card, its symbol a vertical line crossed with two horizontal ones, and combined it with the Ally card, that looked like the letter B made up of two triangles.” I made this one up but there’s a description like this on say, every fifth page, and there’s honestly no reason for this. It helps to imagine the cards in that exact moment but then you move on and you won’t remember any of the symbols two seconds later, and there never comes a point where it actually matters what they looked like. Of course this is not a particularly huge flaw, just something I didn’t understand the point of.

All in all, The Serpent is a fast-paced, entertaining ride with sufficiently likable characters, and lots of potential for a unique fantasy world that I can only hope will be explored in more detail in the sequel.