Rachel Caine: Working Stiff

The first book in a new fantasy series set in modern US. I enjoyed Caine’s Weather Warden series and so I was eager to try her new series even though I’m not a zombie fan.

Publication year: 2011
Format: Audio
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Running Time: 11 hrs and 59 minutes

Bryn Davies is a former soldier and now she’s a mortician. She’s just been hired as a funeral director to Fairview Mortuary, which has a reputation for going through funeral directors quickly. Bryn soon finds out why. Even though her immediate boss, Mr. Fairview, is nice enough, Bryn realizes that he sells drugs. And not just ordinary ones, but the one drug which will restore life to a corpse. Soon after, the villainous Fairview kills her.

However, Bryn is revived with a shot of the drug, Returne. The two men who brought her back work for Pharmadene, the company which developed the drug and they want it back. They decide to use Bryn as a way to track down the black market seller. Because Bryn now need a shot of the drug every day, she has no choice but to agree.

Bryn is very different from Joanne, who is the lead in the Weather Warden series. Bryn is a serious woman and she’s also quiet and contemplative, unlike Joanne. Unfortunately, this makes her somewhat flat and the other characters aren’t remarkable, either. Her situation is also so grim that there’s not a lot of humor in book.

The leader of Pharmadene is a ruthless woman and she makes clear that as soon as Bryn isn’t useful to her, Bryn won’t get the drug anymore. Returne is based on nanotechnology. In addition to restoring a corpse to what it was during live (needing to eat, breath, having same emotions etc.) it also sets up a code word in Bryn’s system (and the systems of everyone else who has been injected with the drug) and when that word is said, Bryn has to obey.

The book has a very dark tone; Bryn is dead and nothing is going to make her alive again. She can’t have a normal life. Even her romantic interest McCallister is cold and aloof. I wasn’t interested in him at all and couldn’t see what Bryn sees in him, except that he’s the only eligible man around. I would have liked the book more without the mandatory romance.

The book doesn’t end in a cliffhanger but it does leave the future open for further adventures. At any case, Bryn has to have Returne or she will literally decompose.

It wasn’t bad but I don’t think I’ll continue with this series.

 

K.A. Stewart: A Shot in the Dark

The second book in an urban fantasy series where the main character is a modern day samurai.

Publication year: 2011
Format: print
Page count: 306
Publisher: Roc

Jesse Dawson is a champion. When someone has made a deal with a demon and contacts Jesse, he can make another deal, with his own soul as the collateral. The demons’ physical bodies don’t have vital points, like a human body, so Jesse needs a bladed weapon to fight them. However, Jesse’s not alone: he’s part of a network of Champions who share information when it’s needed. Old Ukrainian Champion Ivan Zelenko has brought the Champions together even though they work alone and in different parts of the world.

Jesse is happily married to Mira and they have a daughter which is quite a departure from other UF books and I liked that. Even though Jesse hates demons, he’s on speaking terms with one of them. Axel appears when he wants to and sometimes gives Jesse information. He has quite a big role in this book.

A Shot in the Dark is quite different in tone and structure than the first one, A Devil in the Details. While the first one was solidly an urban fantasy, this one has more horror elements.

The males of the Dawson family and their friends have a yearly retreat in a mountain cabin in Colorado. Jesse, his brother Cole, his best friend Will, his friend Marty, the cabin owner Oscar, and Oscar’s teenaged son are going to the cabin to get away from the world and to shoot paint balls at each other. But this time, they have an addition to the group. Jesse’s doctor and good friend has a new boyfriend Cameron and the good doctor pressures Jesse into taking Cameron to the retreat. They also have to take Marty’s mastiff Duke who turns out to be extremely useful.

However, once the group gets to the mountain, Axel warns Jesse to leave immediately. But Jesse can’t just leave his friends and soon they are all trapped into the cabin with bloodthirsty monsters all around.

The start of the book is quite slow with the Dawson family barbecue and then the long car trip to the mountains. The action doesn’t really start until about 100 pages in but then it’s very intense and the book’s mood changes abruptly from light-hearted to horror. Even though Jesse’s friends know intellectually that demons exist, they haven’t ever met one. Still, when they are threatened, they quickly accept that demons are real and concentrate on staying alive. There’s some tension between the characters, too, so it’s not all “us vs. them” mentality.

I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters and Duke was a real delight. We find out that there’s a far larger plot moving beneath.

 

Tanya Huff: Blood Pact

The fourth book in the series.

Publication year: 1993, 2006 for the omnibus
Page count: 283 in the omnibus
Format: print
Publisher: Daw

Vicki has taken on a case that infuriates her: a man has faked his own death and escaped his wife and children to another life. His family was devastated by his death but when his wife realizes he might be alive, she’s determined to make him pay. Vicki is also determined to catch him and make him pay. On top of that, her personal life is starting to shatter; his boyfriends are pressuring her to choose between them. So, Vicki is in no mood to talk to her mother. However, after dodging her calls for a few days, she hear the awful news: her mother is dead.

As usual, Vicki bottles her feelings tight inside. She travels to Kingston by herself; she doesn’t even tell her boyfriends about her mother’s death. However, Henry and Celluci find out about it pretty quickly and follow her, each in his own car. They are determined to give Vicki any support she allows them to give. She’s not happy that they have come but she allows them to stay.

Which is a good thing. In the middle of the funeral, they find out that Vicki’s mother’s body is gone. Vicki will not rest, or grieve, until she has found the body.

Henry and Celluci are afraid that she will break down mentally if she continues to keep her emotions so bottled up. Vicki focuses on rage all the time so that she doesn’t have to think about the fact that her mother is dead and the she dodged her mothers’ last calls. Then she finds out that her mother had a heart condition and everyone at her work place, in the university, knew about it, but she didn’t. She battles rage, grief, and guilt.

I’ve enjoyed the classic villains in the series a lot. This book’s villains continue the trend: they’re a group of scientists at the Queen’s University’s Life Sciences department. Essentially, they’re trying to reanimate the dead. We get to know this at an early stage and like the previous books, Blood Pact isn’t a “who did it” but “how we’re going to stop them” mystery. Thankfully, the corpses aren’t described in gory detail. I still think that Blood Pact has more horror elements than the previous books.

The book ends with a bang that will change the rest of the series.

 

Tanya Huff: Blood Lines

The third book in the series.

Publication year: 1993, 2006 for the omnibus
Page count: 268 in the omnibus
Format: print
Publisher: Daw

Doctor Elias Rax is the Curator of the Egyptology department in the Royal Ontario Museum. He’s made a terrific find in the UK and because the British Museum isn’t interested in the sarcophagus, he’s able to buy it and bring it with him. However, during the long sea voyage something starts to affect his mind. He becomes obsessed with the mummy which he’s convinced is in the sarcophagus. And something is stirring in it; something that has waited for more than a millennia to get out and serve his dark god again.

Meanwhile, both of Vicki’s boyfriends (the 450-year-old vampire Henry Fitzroy and Detective Michael Celluci) are getting antsy about their arrangement. They both know that they are in love with Vicki and want to settle down with her. However, Vicki is doing her best to avoid that conversation with them. But when Henry asks for Vicki’s help, she’s ready to give it. Henry has been dreaming about the sun which he hasn’t seen for 450 years. He’s starting to think that he’s losing his mind and wants to die in sunlight. Because vampires are solitary creatures, he can’t ask any other vampire about it. Vicki agrees to come to Henry’s apartment every sunrise and to keep him from killing himself.

Two men die mysteriously in the museum. Even though the official story is that they died of heart attacks, Celluci is convinced that a mummy has killed them. When Celluci heard of the first death, a mummy was mentioned but after that everyone denies that the museum even has a mummy so Cellyci’s instincts say that it is a cover up.

Once again, Vicki has a lot of problems. The plot forces her to work during the night and twilight which is when her eye sight is at its worst. She’s also fiercely independent which lands her in a bit of trouble. She also comes across as angry pretty much all of the time.

A couple of chapters near the end of the book are set in a women’s prison. Vicki is stripped of her glasses and she is pretty much helpless. I didn’t really care for that section of the book.

I was quite amused when Henry and Celluci are forced to work together. Again. They seem to be developing a working friendship, even though when Vicki’s near, they devolve into macho posturing, which I really don’t care for. We find out more about Vicki’s and Celluci’s relationship. Turns out that during the four years they were together, they weren’t exclusive. It’s just when Henry turned up that Celluci became possessive and jealous. More than a bit too convenient, not to mention hypocritical of Celluci. I find the non-exclusive relationships quite refreshing compared to the “I own you” alpha male bullshit in many other UF. Still, no matter how much I hope that the triangle with change into a triad, it’s not likely. Apparently, Henry is sleeping with Vicki’s young male friend, a former street kid, and Vicki is fine with it.

The plot is fast paced. We get to know the villain quite early, so the book isn’t a “who done it” but “how we’re going to stop him”. The villain is very powerful and I wondered how they are going to stop him.
The ending is a bit too convenient and leaves the love triangle wide open (still).

 

Carrie Vaughn: Kitty Takes a Holiday

The third book in the series.

Publication year: 2007
Page count: 318 + an excerpt of Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Format: print
Publisher: Warner Books

After the climatic ending of the previous book, where Kitty changed into a wolf in front of television cameras, Kitty has withdrawn to a mountain cabin. Supposedly, she’s taking a break from publicity and writing a book. Instead, she’s fighting her inner wolf who wants to just run away from civilization.

Then, someone leaves a slaughtered rabbit on her doorstep and paints a cross on her door with blood. Kitty calls in the local sheriff but to her dismay the local police officers aren’t very efficient. She’s also concerned because she didn’t hear or smell anyone, even with her werewolf senses.

The werewolf hunter Cormac appears. He brings with him Ben O’Farrell, Kitty’s friend and lawyer. A werewolf has bitten Ben and he’s now transforming into a werewolf, too. It’s not going to be easy; some people go crazy. Cormac wants Kitty to help Ben.

Then someone leaves many slaughtered dog carcasses outside the cabin door and makes a circle around the cabin with crosses made of barbed wire and silver. The sheriff is starting to believe that Kitty is doing this herself to get attention. This makes Kitty, of course, angry.

The book has a quite isolated environment and a limited cast. Cormac is his usual dour self and we get to know his background. Apparently, he and Ben made a vow when they were a lot younger that if either of them gets infected with lycantrophy, the other one would kill him. However, in the end, Cormac couldn’t kill Ben but brought him to Kitty thinking that she can help him. Ben seriously thinks about killing himself. Kitty is, of course, furious. She takes Ben into her pack, of two wolves, and becomes very protective of him. This is quite a change for her; when we first met her, she was the omega of her pack, in the next book she doesn’t have a pack, and now she’s the leader. She’s pretty unsure about it herself except that she wants to keep her small pack alive and thriving.

Cormac is now rather protective of Kitty. When the police fail to found out who has been bringing the carcasses outside the cabin, he starts to look into it. Ben is pretty much a mess. As a lawyer, he’s used to being in control and having rules to follow, or bend. Now, he doesn’t have them. His whole self has changed and now has a stranger in his mind. Kitty remembers how her best friend T. J. helped her when she changed and tries to do the same thing for Ben. Also, there’s a lot of tension between Cormac and Ben; neither of them knows how to deal with the change.

There’s a town near the cabin. Now that people know that Kitty is a werewolf, the owner of the convenience store trains a shotgun on Kitty every time she shops there. Also, Ariel, the Priestess of the Night, has started her radio show about all things supernatural and Kitty is convinced that she’s a hack who is trying to ride on Kitty’s fame. Kitty even calls in to the show. This was very, very human and funny.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the book. Kitty has grown quite a bit and I like her better when she isn’t in an abusive relationship with her pack leader.

The ending, or rather the last 1/3 of the book were really surprising in a good way. It was quite different from the videogame like endings a lot of fantasy books have.

 

Lilith Saintcrow: Hunter’s Prayer

The second book in the series about Jill Kismet, a demon hunter.

Publication year: 2008
Page count: 329
Format: ebook
Publisher: Orbit

I haven’t read the first book in this series but I had no problem following the story.

Jill Kismet is a demon hunter, working together with the police of the city of Santa Luz and the Catholic Church. However, most of the humans don’t know that powerful demons hunt them. Even some of the Church officials don’t really believe that Jill is on their side. After all, the official Church doctrine is that even though they train hunters, the hunters are damned because they deal with demons.

Someone is murdering prostitutes in a gruesome manner and Jill is called on the case. The prostitutes’ eyes and most of their intestines have been carved out. Jill and the police believe that the demon responsible eats them. At the same time, Jill finds out that the local Church has been withholding information from her. One of their seminary students has been infected with a demon and Jill has to exorcise it. Demons shouldn’t be able to get near the seminary students, so Jill is very unhappy with that.

Earlier, in the first book I think, Jill was forced to make a bargain with a powerful hellbreed named Perry. He looks like a human but is not. He runs a local underworld cafe, the Monde Nuit, and makes deals with humans. Apparently, Jill got supernatural strength, speed, and healing ability from the deal. She has a scar on her wrist as a mark of the deal and that scar seems to pulse with sex magic pretty much all the time. She also makes smaller deals with Perry for information and she pays them with hours spent alone with him. She’s very nervous about them beforehand because Perry forces her to do things that she enjoys and yet hates herself for enjoying.

The world is pretty grim, full of prostitutes, pimps, drug users, people who make deals with demons to get a slightly better life. The police are often swamped with cases and faced with supernatural horrors they can’t deal with. Jill and her fellow hunters are their only hope of destroying the monsters. The murder scenes are very gory. The story is told in first person POV.

Before Jill became a demon hunter, she was a street prostitute. Her demon hunter mentor saved her and took her as a lover, too. But that mentor, Mikhail, is dead and Jill has to rely on her own wits and skills to survive. She has a new lover, Saul, who is a were, who can transform into a cougar. He’s very possessive and a good working partner because he already knows a lot about the supernatural world. Their relationship seems solid to me but sometimes Jill wonders why Saul is attracted to her in the first place. Apparently, weres are usually repulsed by hellbreed and the people they make deals with.

All characters curse a lot which actually feels pretty adolescent to me, especially when they’re cursing to terrified victims. Even though Jill acts all tough outside, on the inside, she’s sometimes insecure. While she doesn’t doubt her abilities, she doubts her intellect and her decisions and Saul’s feelings for her. She hates Perry, especially when he shows up to save her in fights.

In addition to Perry and Saul, the secondary characters are police officers, who actually appreciate Jill for doing her work, and pimps and their victims.

I’ve read Saintcrow’s Dante Valentine books before and unfortunately, the main characters seem pretty similar: they’ve both been horribly wounded in the past, both physically and mentally, and seem to be stronger because of that. However, Dante has far more trust issues than Jill.

 

Laura Anne Gilman: Burning Bridges

The fourth book in the Retrievers series.

Publication year: 2007
Page count: 384
Format: ebook
Publisher: Luna

Wren Valere is a witch and a lonejack, who by definition don’t want to get involved and don’t want to be part of any organization. However, things are now so bad that she is involved with organizing the other lonejacks together. Someone is killing the non-human fatae and Wren can’t just stand by.

Wren and her friend P. B. (who’s a demon, a non-human race apparently created by human magic users) come across a brutally murdered fatae, an angeli. They are notoriously hard to kill but it seems that a group of humans have managed to do just that. The fatae are outraged and scared. They don’t know who to trust anymore.

In response, the local lonejacks and fatae have formed a loose council which is suppose to organize patrols to keep any more fatae from being hurt. However, it’s very hard to keep the independent people working together.

Wren is a Retriever; she returns objects which have been misplaces. She’s also an excellent cat burglar and her main power keeps her from being noticed by anyone else. Sergei is her partner; he deals with the clients and makes the deals. He also presents potential deals to Wren so that she can choose which ones to take. Sergei also owns an art gallery. Their partnership has worked well because they both can do what they most want. As a Talent, a magic user, Wren’s power is to control the Current which is basically electricity. She’s a loner by nature, has a quick temper, but she’s also very loyal to her friends. Sergei is more of a diplomat but he’s also a former spy for a secret organization called the Silence.

The book focuses on political dealings: Wren and a few others are trying keep together the fragile peace between various magic using (loose) organizations, the leader of the powerful Mage Council is plotting her own thing, and the Silence is full of various plotters. Unfortunately, some of the political dealings are fruitless but require a lot of page time, so it feels that nothing much is happening. I find the Silence fascinating; it’s a secret organization which tries to do good in the world. Unfortunately, some have decided that doing good means getting rid of all magic users. Silence is powerful with lots of operatives and information at its fingertips, and so its agents are capable of doing either lots of good or evil. Meanwhile, the members of the Cosa are so distrustful of each other that it’s pretty frustrating to the reader.

The book also focuses on Wren and Sergei’s relationship. Wren and Sergei had been business partners for ten years before they started a romantic relationship, so they know each other well. I really enjoyed that. However, Sergei is keeping important information a secret from Wren. Specifically, he’s become addicted to Current. Sometimes during sex Wren loses her control over the electricity and gives Sergei small jolts. Unfortunately, even though Sergei downplays that, his body is starting to break down because of it. Keeping secrets also hurts their relationship which is based on trust.

Many of the secondary characters we’ve seen in previous books return. P. B. gives hints about what demons actually do and that they live a very long time.

Burning Bridges felt to me like a bridging book, introducing plot points which will play in the two books to come, but not terribly exciting by itself.

 

Jocelynn Drake: Wait for Dusk

The fifth book in the Dark Days urban fantasy series.

Publication year: 2010
Format: Audio
Publisher: Harper Audio
Narrator: Christina Delaine
Running Time: 13 hrs and 22 minutes

Wait for Dusk starts right after the cliffhanger which ended Pray for Dawn. Despite all her powers, Mira has been kidnapped and badly beaten by a creature who wears her father’s face. The creature claims to be one of the ancient gods who has gone with various names: Ogo, Anansi, Coyote, Loki etc. and that he’s Mira’s sire. He’s very disappointed that Mira is a vampire. He threatens to turn Mira into a human so that she can bear their child. Horrified, Mira refuses. Nick, as he calls himself, gives her another chance: if Mira can control Danaus and Jebari, and turn their powers against them, Mira will have proven herself. Nick gives Mira a limited time to do so and leaves her battered. He also gives her additional powers to twist Danaus’ and Jebari’s powers which have been used against Mira before.

Valerio teleports from Venice. The vampire Coven wants Mira to return and take her place officially. However, when Mira and Danaus travel to Venice, one of the old vampires challenges Mira for the seat. But Mira burns him and reclaims her place. The Coven sends Mira to Budapest. The old city doesn’t have a vampire Keeper and has apparently a lot of naturi so it needs a protector. At first the vampires of Budapest seem welcoming but they are hiding a lot. In addition to Danaus, Mira has a questionable ally in Valerio, who is Mira’s old friend – as much as vampires can be friends. He also has his own reasons for wanting to go to Budapest. And Mira’s nemesis has also traveled to the city.

In this book, Mira declares Danaus her consort, her equal. She tries to explain it away as a political move and a way to protect Danaus but of course she’s also attracted to him. Their on again, off again relationship hasn’t been my favorite thing in this series but here it reaches an all time low. Danaus finds a vampire’s pet whom he’s determined to protect. Mira turns into jealous harridan and immediately loses all of her trust in him. Also, the city doesn’t seem to have much of police force. At least in Savannah Mira has to worry about the local police.

Nick has interesting powers: Mira can’t hurt him but he can hurt her and even turn her into a human. Nick can also appear where he wants. However, otherwise he seems to be just one another powerful man who want to control Mira for his own ends. Nick seems to imply that even if Mira hadn’t been turned into a vampire, she would have still been alive. After all, Mira is 600 years old and as a human she would have been long dead before now but Nick hasn’t searched her out before.

Mira was almost motherly in the previous book but in this one she’s back to behaving like a vicious vampire. She’s also doing to best to keep the vampires and werewolves together for the final confrontation. That means a lot of politicking.

The ending isn’t a cliffhanger but it changes politics in this vampire world.

Unfortunately, I didn’t care for the narrator. She made Mira sound like she was crying or whining all the time but especially when Mira was supposed to be angry.

Oh, and I really loath that cover.

 

Seanan McGuire: Ashes of Honor

The newest Toby Daye book! The sixth book in the series.

Publication year: 2012
Format: Audio
Publisher: Audible
Narrator: Mary Robinette Kowal
Running Time: 12 hrs and 26 minutes

A year has passed since the tragic events at the end of the previous book, One Salt Sea. October Day, Toby, is trying to recover and not think about Tybalt. But she feels like she isn’t in control of her life anymore and she’s taking more and more unnecessary risks. Her former fetch (a death omen), May, her would-be lover Tybalt, and her squire Quentin are all worried.

Then a fellow knight, Etienne, asks for her help with finding his half-blooded daughter who has been kidnapped. Etienne had had a brief relationship with a folklore teacher years ago and didn’t even know that he had a child until the child’s mother, Bridget, call him in panic, accusing him of kidnapping Chelsea. Toby and the gang are shocked by Etienne’s revelation because he has always been a very by-the-book faerie and very unlikely get involved with a mortal, but circumstances were exceptional. It turns out that Chelsea is already sixteen and she has her father’s teleporting abilities. Most likely, some faerie has kidnapper her for their own nefarious schemes. To muddle things more, Chelsea’s mother Bridget knows something about the faeries and doesn’t trust any of them, especially Etienne and the suspicions fairies he has sent. However, Bridget doesn’t really have any other choice but to help Toby and Quentin.

Chelsea doesn’t know anything about Faerie but she has been secretly experimenting with her powers. She hasn’t said anything to her mother who has always said that they need to keep her powers a secret.

All of the familiar cast returns and I love them. May has been officially designated Toby’s twin sister, and she and Quentin live together with Toby in a rather large house which is owned by Toby’s liege lord, Sylvester. Tybalt, the suave King of Cats, has problems of his own; his underlings aren’t happy that he has become close to a changeling and some are taking matters into their own hands. Also, his heir and Toby’s friend Raj has disappeared. Tybalt has a big presence in the book and I really enjoyed that. We also get to visit the technologically inclined faeries of Tamed Lighting who were introduced in the second book. And of course Toby needs help from the sea witch Luidaeg with tracking down Chelsea.

The brief scene with Luidaeg gives some surprising insights into her personality and life, and are among my favorite scenes from the book. Indeed, many of the characters get further development. We get to see how Quentin has learned under Toby’s tutelage and May gets to stand up to Toby.

My favorite parts of the previous books have been the characters, the expanding world, and the dialog. They are all great in this book, too. The characters feel like old friends to me and many of them are friends who have survive horrible things together. That shows in their interactions. We also get to visit a couple of new places and learn more about Tybalt’s background.

The story starts with a familiar premise: Toby looking for a lost child and getting help from the sea witch. Fortunately, beyond that there’s little repetition of the previous books.

My only complaint is that Toby gets hurt a lot, although mostly physically this time. I’m very happy with the ending. This is a great continuation of the series although it’s not as an emotionally gut wrenching as the previous book.

 

K. A. Stewart: Devil in the Details

My newest review: K. A. Stewart: Devil in the Details.

Now this is urban fantasy I like! The main character is a modern day samurai and he’s happily married.