Nov 10, 2013: From the moment of the protagonist’s introduction, cutting her hair with clippers over her toilet, I liked the breezy style of Kliff’s Edge. The main character, May Kliff, is a paranormal investigator who has her estranged brother, a former drug addict, drop back into her life in the middle of an investigation about a dog that the animal control can’t catch. As you can probably tell through my description of it, I felt the plot was interesting if unconventional, and it captured my interest from the first.

May is as dubious about the investigation as it would seem to warrant at first, until she begins to hear more about the dog that’s escaped capture hundreds of times. The author does a great job of spinning the tale out and introducing her characters through a lot of dialogue, and it was fun to see the story taking shape as I read it.

Most of the dialogue between May and Max sparkles, but the part where May explains (or maybe I should say argues with Max) about her genderqueer status seemed a bit canned at parts. In a way, I guess it could read as an old argument, that is, May arguing with ghosts in her past about the same topic, but the rest of the dialogue seemed so natural that this seemed to naturally highlight itself as somewhat less so. I’d recommend the author work on it a bit, since she mentions that what she’s posting is in draft status, anyway.

Also I feel I should mention that although the story is supposed to have a two-week update cycle, the last story update was posted in September. I think the author has a promising start on the story, and I’d really like to see it continue, so I hope that she picks it back up.

At any rate, I’d recommend this story to anyone who likes paranormal mysteries or wants to read a story with an interesting genderqueer protagonist, with the caveat that I don’t know whether/when the author is going to pick this story back up.

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Aug 19, 2013: Kliff’s Edge is a pretty entertaining read thus far. It follows May Kliff, a "genderqueer freelancer." She’s a really strong character, and I can appreciate her particular mix of self-confidence and assertiveness. Something about her just rings true, and it appears that she’s experienced in her work, which involves running around solving the weird, seemingly inexplicable problems.

The author explains that the serial is going to be composed of a series of self-contained stories which will be of varying lengths. For the first of these stories she sets up a pretty interesting conflict—a dog is hit with elephant tranquilizer but STILL manages to live and escape animal control—and really milks the mystery inherent in that.

However the core of these first few chapters isn’t focused on the case but instead shows the relationship that May shares with her older brother Max, who is some sort of junkie and abandoned the family when they needed her most. Their relationship really hit me in the gut, and I wonder where it’s headed.

Right now the serial is only four chapters, so I might come back and add more to this review later. As it stands, this is a good story.

I haven’t read Illise Montoya’s other serials, but it makes sense that she’s an experienced writer. This serial doesn’t stumble out of the gate. Still, I’m only giving it four stars right now because I think it’ll probably be getting better, and I want to leave room in my ratings for improvement.

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