The Association 1: President Park Incidents

Title: The Association 1: President Park Incidents
Author:E.P. Shirleyjack
Source: The author
Book Cover for The Association 1: President Park Incidents

Description from Smashwords:

In retrospect, I should have called the police after the Second President Park Incident. The police or the Magic Council. But it all started so innocuously, behind the dumpster at Jiggle Jon’s Cold Beer, Lotto and Groceries, in the bluish light of the corner street lamp. It started with a frog and a question. And here we are, three friends chasing answers through trash strewn gullies and hostile back country highways, all because of that frog…and The Association.

A novelette. First tale of The Association.

The three teen-aged friends are Tay, Sarah and Togo.  Tay is the calm one, Sarah is the nervous one and Togo is the crazy one.  Togo formed the Briarglen Community Association and they are the sole members.  Their first project is a watershed survey which keeps them busy collecting water samples.  One evening Tay finds a frog with six legs.  They start counting the mutant frogs and stumble across the reason why the frogs may have mutated.

Tay is the narrator of the novelette and does a pretty good job of telling their tale.  Sarah seems like a bit of a tag-along.  Togo is a good instigator.  In previous endeavors she talked Tay and Sarah into reading at the library’s storytime and taking karate classes.  Their conversation while searching on foot for more frogs captures the pendulum of teenage girl conversations.  One moment they’re talking about their future aspirations and the next one they’re singing “Ninety Nine Mutant Frogs in a Ditch”.

Most of the novelette was spent focusing on characters and plot.  This certainly isn’t a bad thing but urban fantasy needs to have some worldbuilding to ground the reader to the rules of the world.  The last third of the novelette gives the reader some clues as to why a Magic Council is needed in addition to a police force in Demosthena.  This took a bit long for my taste. 

The girls are supposed to have more adventures and I’ll be interested in seeing what happens to them next.

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