Twenty Palaces by Harry Connolly

The book is subtitled "A Prequel," and it is indeed a prequel to the three books in the kick-ass Twenty Palaces series. I've thoroughly enjoyed all the books, so I was thrilled to hear that the prequel was available.

I wasn't sure what to expect, though, since the author released the book himself. I was very happy to discover that it's fully as good as the books published by Del Rey. Although it is a prequel, like all of Connolly's other books it works well as a standalone story.

Ray Lilly has just been released from prison and is going to live with his aunt and uncle. He lucks into a part-time job right away, but isn't so happy to run into an old friend from middle school. Turns out that there's something strange going on with Ray's former best friend, the guy who lost the use of his legs in a handgun accident--and Ray was holding the gun. His friend's walking again, good as new. Some people are calling it a miracle, others insurance fraud. But as Ray discovers by accident, there's some really weird stuff in the world, and his friends have stumbled into something horrible.

I really liked seeing Ray before he met Annalise, and in fact was surprised and delighted when she appeared in the book and we get Ray's first impression of her. I also like knowing how Ray made his ghost knife and how exactly he ended up as Annalise's wooden man.

Like the other books in the series, this one's a helluva ride. The action starts fast and doesn't let up. The writing is clean and to the point, without the excess of description in the first book, Child of Fire (I mention this in case some people were reluctant to pick up a book set before Child of Fire for that reason). Ray's a firmly likable guy, raw from his time in prison and trying hard to make his way in the world without falling into his old bad habits.

Right now the book's only available as an ebook ordered directly from the author (link below). [Correction: it's also available through Amazon and will be up in a few other online venues soon.] It's definitely worth the couple of bucks, and is an excellent addition to the series.

ebook buy link (directly from the author)
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Circle of Enemies by Harry Connolly

This is the third book in the Twenty Palaces series, and I really do think it's the best so far. The writing is tighter, as is the plot.

Ex-con Ray Lilly is between temp jobs--both ordinary and magical. He's also waking up screaming almost every night from nightmares about the events of the previous book. Then an old friend shows up and accuses him of killing her and all their friends--and disappears. Literally. Of course Ray takes off to L.A. to find out what's really going on.

Like the previous books, the action starts immediately and doesn't let up. It's fast, brutal, and riveting. I don't know that the violence is quite as much as in the last book, but the creepiness factor is just as high. Connolly's monsters would freak the hell out of Lovecraft.

I really like Ray, who's tough, practical, and does what he has to do even if he doesn't like it. I would have liked to see more of Annalise, Ray's boss, but their interaction in this book is satisfying; I like the way their uncomfortable relationship is unfolding at the same time that Ray is learning more about the Twenty Palaces Society Annalise works for.

One great thing about this book: while I recommend you read the first two books just because they're great too, you don't really need to; and while this book sets up for the events of the next ones, it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. In other words, Circle of Enemies stands alone while also forwarding the overarching series plot. I wish I could say the same of all series.

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Hexed by Kevin Hearne

I reviewed the first book in this series, Hounded, a few weeks ago. Hexed is technically being released tomorrow, but I snagged a copy early at the book store and of course read it immediately.

Hexed is almost as much fun as Hounded. It's a bit longer too, or seems that way since the ending is a very long, involved brawl. It's that ending that keeps me from recommending the book with quite as much enthusiasm as the first one, although it's certainly not bad at all. I just thought the action was drawn out a bit too long.

But that's a minor issue, really. It's still a hugely entertaining story with a more complex plot than Hounded and a lot of hints at what to expect from the next book (Hammered, which will be released next month). There's a ton of action and a lot of humor.

The book takes place about three weeks after the events of Hounded. The local coven of witches has been weakened and as a result, several sets of baddies are trying to move in on the Tempe, Arizona area. The coven wants Atticus to help them defend their turf, something he wouldn't ordinarily agree to. But as it happens, he has unfinished business with the witches and demons on their way into town--and to take them down, he's going to have to call in some serious favors and make some serious promises. Oh, and steal some serious weapons.

One of the best parts of these books is Atticus's realistic friendship with his dog, Oberon. The two can communicate, which is the source of some of the funniest lines in the book and some of the most poignant exchanges. Atticus is a likable character even without Oberon, largely because of his concern for his friends. And the worldbuilding details are enormously entertaining. I can't wait to see what Hearne does with the next book.

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Hounded by Kevin Hearne

This is the kind of book I'm always hoping for when I go into the bookstore. It's light without being shallow, fun without being stupid, and fast-paced without being frenetic.

Atticus O'Sullivan looks 21, but that's off by about two thousand years. He's a druid who's managed to stay alive, and a step ahead of a Celtic god who wants him dead, for a very long time thanks to his magic, an enchanted sword, and a healthy dollop of paranoia. Currently he's living in Tempe, Arizona with his wolfhound Oberon, running an occult bookstore and keeping quiet. Arizona's a good place to hide: not too many Fae around and not too many local gods or goddesses. But he's stayed in one place for too long and his old enemy has found him--and Atticus is tired of running.

The plot isn't especially clever, although it works perfectly well and was entertaining. The setting is interesting (how many fantasies--heck, how many books--are set in Arizona? Poor Arizona) and the characters are likable, especially Atticus and his dog. Mostly what I enjoyed about this book, though, was the sense that the author was having as much fun writing it as I was reading it. There's a lot of humor in the book, sure, but it's more a feeling that runs through the whole thing, like someone walking with a bounce in their step because it's such a nice day. Hounded made me feel like smiling at strangers.

I think it's mostly to do with the writing, which is fluid and sure. Or maybe it's the worldbuilding. Hearne obviously had a blast throwing everything into the mix--this is a lot more than a Celtic fantasy. All the gods and goddesses are real in this world, as are vampires and werewolves and witches and other things like that. But it's not a wacky-zany kind of book, either. The stakes are high, as is the body count. It's also a very fast read and hard to put down; I read the first chapter to see if I liked it, and the next thing I knew, I'd finished the book.

The next two books in the series, Hexed and Hammered, are going to be released in the next two months. You can count on reading my reviews here.

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Killing Rocks by D.D. Barant

I reviewed the second book in this series, Death Blows, last spring. I didn't like it much but I'd enjoyed the first book, Dying Bites, so much that I gave the series a pass until I could read the third book and see in what direction Barant was taking the series.

Well, Killing Rocks is the third book. The only good thing I have to say about it is that it just freed up some space on my bookshelves, because it's going to the used bookstore along with the second book. I'll keep the first. I liked it.

To recap the series quickly, FBI profiler Jace Valchek has been yanked into an alternate reality by a powerful sorcerer in order to track down a serial killer. In the alternate world, humans are a protected minority species--most people are vampires or werewolves. If Jace can engineer the serial killer's capture, she can go home to her own reality. In Killing Rocks, Jace thinks she's close to getting the killer, with a bonus of capturing the rogue sorcerer who brought her to this world and can put her back. Then things go kerblooey and she's stuck in the middle of a war as the golems take over.

This book is just one deus ex machina after another. Jace does absolutely nothing--there's no reason for her to be the main character. In fact, there's really no reason for her to be in the book at all. She reacts, runs away, gets rescued repeatedly, and thinks a lot about her past for no good reason. (The irony is that last year I used Jace as an example of a smart, active urban fantasy heroine in a rant against UF where the heroines do nothing but react and get rescued.)

The ending--no lie--is taken directly from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Except in the movie, it was supposed to be ludicrous and unrealistic. Also, I cannot forgive the author's blatant maneuvering to keep Jace from resolving her problems and therefore ending the series. Barant, you're not fooling anyone.

The main problem with the book and the series, I think, is that the author has plotted it out very carefully (and I'm guessing she didn't have the overarching plot in place until after she'd finished the first book, because it's clear she keeps having to fudge to make things match up). She can't deviate from the plot, but the plot doesn't allow for Jace to actually make a difference. That's why Jace comes across as a witness to events instead of an active player. That's all she is.

And I know I've harped on this in the other DD Barant reviews, but the present tense is unnecessary and annoying. It's far worse in this book, though, since big chunks consist of flashbacks, infodumping in the form of stories and legends, and characters recounting events to other characters--all in past tense. The constant tense changes are jarring.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Lertulo's review of the first book, which he really didn't like. Frankly, after reading this third book, I see exactly where he's coming from.

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Hellforged by Nancy Holzner

Hellforged is the sequel to Deadtown, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. I liked the first book, but when the sequel came out I discovered I wasn't all that interested in reading it.

Hellforged started out fairly slow, or maybe it just seemed that way because my interest kept flagging. Vicky is a shapechanger and demon-hunter, but in the first book she ended up having to link herself to a demon called the Destroyer in order to banish it back to Hell. Now the Destroyer is showing up in Vicky's dreams, and she suspects it's connected to several grisly deaths of zombies she knows. Finally she gets worried enough to call her Aunt Mab in Wales for advice. Mab tells her to come to Wales immediately.

So she does. At the drop of a hat, Vicky leaves the country for several weeks. This is a symptom of the main problem I have with Vicky, which is that she doesn't seem to have any interests or activities outside of demon-hunting. Sure she has a boyfriend, but she's the first to admit that they don't actually see each other much. Essentially, Vicky spends her nights demon-hunting (note: not as interesting as it sounds) and her days asleep, and that's all. It makes her seem unrealistic and flat, and I never felt much of a connection with her.

Not only that, but she doesn't even seem to like demon-hunting or shape-changing. She never shows much enthusiasm for anything in her life. The woman desperately needs to take up watercolors or something.

The plot isn't bad once Vicky stops whining that she can't do what Mab's teaching her to do, and instead settles down to do it. I was glad that the ending was satisfying and ties up a lot of loose threads, because I doubt I'll bother to read the next book.

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Vicious Circle by Linda Robertson

I hated this book.

I started off not hating it. I just didn't like it all that much, but there were bits of it that I found interesting--enough that I kept reading. I liked main character Persephone's relationship with Johnny the werewolf, and I liked that Persephone wasn't afraid to get mad at people who deserved it (although she never followed through with her anger, which was frustrating). I even liked that she had a small obsession with the King Arthur myths, even though it was a teeny tiny part of her character that was never developed enough to be truly interesting.

But the plot, forgive me, is utter shit. I am so tired of this kind of book. For one thing, it's a prequel to the sequels that I will not be reading. Nothing's resolved, and the big climax of the book consists of Persephone essentially deciding not to act, presumably so she can have those sequels. I usually wait a little while to write my reviews, but I just finished reading and I'm still in the white-hot fury of a reader who was denied an ending.

I had lots of other problems with the book too. Like, why bother to spell werewolf 'waerewolf'? Also, the pacing was glacial, slowed even further by extended meditation scenes, magic rituals with doggerel poetry, and an endless chapter that consisted of one character having his Tarot cards read. No one will remain seated during the Tarot card explanations! I skimmed and skimmed and still feel like I've been reading for a hundred years. Most of the action--and I use that word very loosely--takes place in Persephone's house.

As for the plot: Persephone is a witch who's sympathetic to werewolves and lets them kennel in her basement on the full moon (this means she locks them in dog crates, because otherwise I guess they'd go out and kill people). When a werewolf friend is murdered, Persephone is contacted by the leader of the local coven to hunt down and kill the murderer. She gives Persephone the killer's name and a lot of cash; Persephone asks another werewolf friend to research the killer, I guess because she doesn't know how to use Google. Then the research friend is attacked and nearly killed. Persephone takes the woman into her home to recover since the hospital refuses to treat werewolves.

This is approximately the first half of the book. I kept wondering when Persephone would start earning the money she took. She doesn't actually do anything. Other people find out stuff and tell her, and their revelations astonish her because she has the brain of a titmouse and the gumption of a small rock. At almost exactly halfway through the book, the characters start telling Persephone she's the Lustrata, the Chosen One who will either kill all the vampires or unite the vampires and werewolves and witches, or something. It's not clear. Persephone spends the next 5,000 pages of the book not wanting to be the Lustrata. At the end--sorry, spoiler alert--she decides she'll be the Lustrata after all, because apparently that means she doesn't have to do anything! Hooray!

I liked a few of the characters. Johnny the werewolf was interesting and probably the most well rounded. The subplot of the murdered werewolf's daughter was at times moving and felt more realistic than anything else in the book (even if the girl seemed much older than nine years old). However, all the other characters were either interchangeable--all the other werewolves, whose names I couldn't even keep straight--or cliches, like the hypocritical TV preacher, the friend-who's-found-Jesus-and-won't-tolerate-anyone-else, the superpowerful megasexy vampire lord (oh, how I loathe that particular cliche), the wise-but-annoying grandmother.

So yeah, I really hated this book. What makes me particularly bitter is that I picked this book up after I got partway into a very similar book and gave up on it because I hated the vampires; I didn't realize this one would have the same issues until the vampires turned up halfway through. At least that other book had some action scenes.

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Soul Hunt by Margaret Ronald

I reviewed the second book in this series, Wild Hunt, back in February and I've read the first book, Spiral Hunt, too. To catch us up briefly, Evie Scelan is a bike courier and "hound"--someone with the rare magical ability to trace people and things by following magical scents--in Boston (of course). At the end of the last book, she took control of the wild hunt, and made an unknown bargain with a water spirit to save her boyfriend's life. Both events come back to bite her in the butt in this book.

Soul Hunt feels like the last book in a trilogy, although it's possible there will be more books in the series. A lot of loose ends are tied up in this one.

I really liked Spiral Hunt, although I liked Wild Hunt less. While I was reading Soul Hunt, though, I stayed in a constant state of annoyed. Evie doesn't do a whole lot in this book, and the things she does do are almost all poor choices. She misses connections that are obvious, trusts people who are obviously untrustworthy, and seems to have a separate (and stricter) set of rules to live by than any of the other magic-users in the book. In other words, I found the plot more than a little contrived.

Evie herself started out in the first book as a strong character but has become more passive--not to a ridiculous degree, but definitely something that bothered me. At the beginning of the book she keeps having gray-outs when she's unable to scent or even see in color, but she doesn't do anything about it and doesn't even make the connection with her bargain in the last book. It was not exactly a big leap of logic, and she's surrounded by magic-users who could have given her a consultation at any time. That's just one example of the problems with this book. I was frustrated with Evie and with the plot, which meandered; I didn't find the ending very satisfying because Evie spends so many paragraphs explaining why she has to do what she has to do. It rang false to me.

The writing is excellent, though. I don't know if the writing in the previous books was this good and I just didn't notice, or if Ronald's getting better as she goes along. I'd like to see what she does next, although I'm kind of hoping it's not another Evie Scelan book.

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Deadtown by Nancy Holzner

Vicky Vaughn is a shapeshifter and a professional demon slayer, mostly of demons infesting people's dreams, although she's good at taking down harpies too. Like most urban fantasy heroines, she lives in Boston (I don't know what's wrong with Boston in real life, but it's sure a mess in fantasyland). A few years before, Boston was the focus of a short-lived but nasty virus that killed people instantly--and then reanimated them. The resulting zombies, along with other paranormals like werewolves, vampires, and Vicky herself, are forced to live in the restricted section of Boston now called Deadtown. Paranormals have few rights in Massachusetts and none elsewhere, but Vicky's (sorta-kinda) boyfriend, a lawyer and a werewolf, is working on that. Days before a key election, though, Vicky has her hands full dealing with a Hellion--a powerful demon that seems to be targeting her.

I enjoyed Deadtown thoroughly and I'm looking forward to the sequel, which will be released in a few weeks. It's not a perfect book, though. I liked Vicky, especially when she lost her temper and opened the whoopass can (not a moment too soon, either); on the other hand, she misses some pretty obvious hints about what's going on.

The worldbuilding is interesting, but I thought it was a little over-the-top when it came to paranormal rights. Seems like in a world where demons are a real threat and where humans can wield magic, paranormals would fit right in. Still, I do like the way Holzner explores human rights and racism in the coded way that fantasy novelists can.

The plot kept me riveted and I read the book straight through yesterday evening. Holzner has an easy, competent style that doesn't draw attention to itself and her characters feel realistic. I did find Tina the teenage zombie sidekick ridiculously annoying. Hopefully she won't end up in the sequel. The vampires and werewolves are pretty stock, but Vicky's own shapeshifting abilities are different and interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how Holzner develops the world and characters in the next book.

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Game of Cages by Harry Connolly

I meant to finish reading a book of ghost stories to review today, since it's Halloween, but I made the mistake of picking this one up and had to read the whole thing. Maybe I'll get to the ghost stories later. I finished Game of Cages very late and went straight to bed last night, and it gave me really weird dreams.

Game of Cages is the sequel to Child of Fire, which I read just a few days ago. I don't usually read sequels immediately after reading the previous books. This series is too amazing to resist, though.

This book picks up about eight months after the events of the last one. Ex-con Ray Lilly is living with his aunt and working in a grocery store, but when an investigator for the mysterious Twenty Palaces Society shows up, he jumps at the chance to help them out again. Someone has summoned and bound a monster and is auctioning it off to the highest bidder; the Society plan to gather information on those attending the auction so they can strike later. But when Ray and the investigator arrive, something's gone horribly wrong. The monster has escaped and is headed for the nearest town. The bidders are searching for it and eliminating their competition at the same time--and they're just as happy to kill Ray too.

Game of Cages holds up well against the first book, which was brilliant. It's not as tightly plotted (although it's better plotted than most stories of this kind) and much of the action consists of searching for the monster and discovering bodies. The body count is staggering, which strained my credulity a bit. Still, it works, and Connolly's monsters are possibly the creepiest I've read outside of Lovecraft.

Ray's struggles with himself and with the difficult job he's accepted are fascinating. We get a little more information about the world and how magic works too, which I like. It's obvious that the series is building to something to do with the Society. I'm looking forward to the next book and will definitely read it as soon as it comes out.

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Child of Fire by Harry Connolly

I've read the first three of Jim Butcher's Dresden books and wasn't all that enamored of them. I know, heresy. Child of Fire by Harry Connolly reminds me of the Dresden books, except, you know, a lot better.

Ray Lilly is an ex-con working for Annalise, a woman who hunts down rogue sorcerers. Annalise hates him. Ray's just glad to be out of prison. The two of them are investigating some strange events in the town of Hammer Bay; Ray doesn't know what's going on since Annalise doesn't feel the need to share information with someone she expects will be dead within hours. Ray's tougher than she thinks, though. And when he realizes the children of Hammer Bay are dying in magical fires that no one seems to notice--even the parents don't seem aware that they've lost kids--Ray's determined to do what he can to help.

Ray is a nice guy with a lot of regrets about his past. He knows how easy it would be to act like a typical ex-con, bulling his way through problems with violence, and he knows he doesn't want to be that kind of person. He's also drawn strongly to magic--part of the reason he's willing to work for Annalise--and has his own little piece, a 'ghost knife' that will cut through ghosts, magic, and dead things. I liked him, and I'm delighted that as the book progressed, Connolly makes sure that Annalise's own motivations become clear and her character becomes sympathetic even if she's never actually likable.

The action in the book starts almost immediately and simply doesn't let up. It's a hard book to put down once you've started reading. The townspeople of Hammer Bay sometimes seem a little bit too small-town-cornball to be believable, and at times I got impatient with detailed descriptions of things that didn't become important until much later, but those are small problems.

The pacing of the book is spot-on, and the big climax worked perfectly--not an easy trick when the mystery is set up so well. It's easy to set up a mystery that turns out to be a let-down. That's not the case here.

In short, this is probably the perfect example of an urban fantasy.

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The Darkest Edge of Dawn by Kelly Gay

I just re-read my review of this book's predecessor (The Better Part of Darkness) to see how the two compare. Turns out there are some things that have improved and some that haven't; big surprise there.

Kelly Gay jumps right back into the world she left--just days later in story time. Atlanta has undergone some big shifts: there's this whole cloud-of-darkness floating over the city, for example, and the level-one boss from the previous book has checked out. Taking his place is a serial murderer, and it's up to our dynamic duo of MCs to find and stop him.

This book doesn't bring in much additional novelty. We revisit the Djinn, which is fun but not really new since they were covered pretty well last time. We get to see our buddy cop the Siren pull off some big magic, but again that's been seen before. The MC's sister is addicted to a nasty magic+drug combo, but that was the result of book one's plot. OTOH, even though the world hasn't expanded much it's still rich enough to justify the additional interior exploration.

Another thing that hasn't changed much is the MC, Charlie Madigan. I'm hoping that's the result of the short story-time between books 1 and 2, rather than the author's inability (or lack of desire) to let the character grow and change. Take the Dresden series for comparison--and yes, I'm biased since I love that one: the MC there grows and changes significantly from book to book, and his compatriots grow and change with him. I really want to see some of that happening here.

That's all kind of bumming, but it's not particularly bad. The yummy part is that Gay manages to keep the light-and-fast thing going again: action interleaved with drama and plot twists, a few minor novelties thrown in just when you need them. The pacing is very good and turns this into a fun read, with a satisfying dénouement--that last bit being a welcome improvement, since the last one's epic clash was so very, very flat.

So, as with the last one, this is a fun but not really compelling book. I'll be buying book three, but if the characters don't get their growth on and the author can't expand the world into new directions, I doubt I'll read book four.

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Dying Bites by D D Barant

Yet another urban fantasy series. I'd really love to say this one stood out in some fashion from the genre, but the truth is it doesn't. From its cookie-cutter MC to its snarky, double-entendre title it's pretty much a carbon copy of everything on the UF shelf that you've already read.

Let's start with that MC--and I can't do it any better than the book does itself:

"I get my share of male attention. I stand five eight, do a hundred crunches a day and have the abs to prove it. I've been told I have the neckline of a goddess, though nobody ever says which one. My hair is long, very black, and full, while my features tend more toward the Slavic definition of beauty than North American. I don't put on a miniskirt unless I mean it, but when I do I can cause car accidents."

Mary Sue, any one? MC is tough as nails, carries an oversized gun (page 3: "It's a Ruger Super Redhawk Alaskan, a short-barreled revolver chambered with .454 ammunition..."), enough martial arts to handle a werewolf in full attack mode... you get the drift.

Pretty bad so far. The only thing that remotely makes this series different from its peers is its setting: the first pages introduce the MC being slipped from our universe through a dimensional gateway to a parallel one, and in this new place humans are a small government-protected minority of the population (rough thirds being vampire, were and golem--that last at least an interesting addition). And the only part of the plot that's worthwhile is that the MC is chasing a serial killer, and it's at least mildly interesting to try to figure out what's happening before the characters do.

The book culminates in a Deus Ex Machina ending, nearly literally, that comes through as a horrific blunt trauma to the reader's suspension of disbelief. It's clear that the author wants to set up a sequel--and in fact, one's available--but I have no idea why any reader would bother.

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Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski

Yes, I do still read books written for grown-ups. Also sometimes I accidentally hit ctl-P and publish a post before I write more than one sentence.

So, okay, where was I? Expiration Date. I saw this reviewed somewhere and thought it sounded interesting, so I bought it, and then I looked at it in confusion and couldn't remember why I'd bought it. And then I read the back and thought, "Hey, interesting." I sometimes suspect I have the memory of a goldfish.

Mickey Wade is newly unemployed with no prospects and no savings. He moves into his grandfather's old apartment in his childhood neighborhood, now a bad part of town, since his grandfather's in a coma in the hospital. The first night he's there, Mickey wakes up in the middle of the night--in the past. It's 1972, the year he was born.

The more Mickey learns about the events in his past, the more uneasy he becomes. It's not just about his own past, but his father's and his grandfather's too. Oh, and a string of unsolved murders--including the murder of Mickey's dad.

The book is well-written, unfolding without haste but with plenty of tension. Mickey isn't the most sympathetic character I've ever read--he makes poor choices and drinks too much--but he's understandable and he tries to do the right thing. The plot is a fascinating take on a time-travel story. I thought I had it figured out toward the beginning, but I was completely wrong. That's a great feeling.

I did find the story awfully depressing. There are no bright spots in Mickey's life. Even Meghan, the friend who helps him as he slips in and out of the past, is a little distant with him. His family is a dysfunctional mess, his life in such ruins that it almost felt a little cartoonish. But the gritty, atmospheric look at 1972 Philadelphia manages to be both compelling and nostalgic without being overwhelmed by the intricate (and sometimes confusing) plot.

I enjoyed the book very much, but I will say the ending left me a little flat. I'd have liked it if Mickey was a little quicker on the uptake about the events at the end, and the very last couple of lines just soured me on the whole book. I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I will say that there is no feasible way that the item described in the last few sentences could be there. None. It was such a blatant "look how clever I am" moment on the author's part that it retroactively made the whole book that much less enjoyable.

But it's still a good book. Just ignore the last paragraph.

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Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

I didn't like Rosemary and Rue. I disliked it pretty much from the beginning, so I probably should have just put it down. The only reason I kept reading was because I wanted to find out who the murderer was, and then McGuire doesn't play fair with the clues.

I didn't like October "Toby" Daye, the main character, and I didn't like any other character in the book either, and I'm thoroughly sick of the Cruel World of Faerie. Mostly, though, I didn't like Toby. We're told over and over that she's a knight of faerie and has done all these heroic things in the past despite being a changeling instead of a pureblood, but I don't believe it. She spends the whole book essentially droning "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going to the garden to eat worms" when every single character in the book is bending over backwards to help her. She needs the help, too, because her greatest talent seems to be getting shot by bad guys. She sure doesn't do much else.

Deep breath. Okay, seriously, there's no need for me to take this personally--it's just that I'm seeing an increasing trend in urban fantasy of so-called strong female characters who don't actually do anything but get rescued. You know, there is plenty of ground between the "man with boobs" type of female character and doormats who don't even shoot the bad guy at the very end of the book when the bad guy has just confessed to every crime going and has shown him/herself to be evil and insane. Seriously, Toby, just pull the damn trigger. What is your problem?

To be fair, if you can get past the fact the main character spends most of the book feeling sorry for herself and/or recuperating from the latest ambush that someone had to rescue her from, the story's not as terrible as I'm making it out to be. The writing is solid (I use this term a lot; I mean it's not bad writing at all but it's not brilliant prose) and the worldbuilding interesting. While I hated every single character as though they'd done me personal wrongs, at least I could tell them apart (although there were so many characters that I kept losing track of who was whom).

Not much happens in the book, though. Toby is forced by a dying woman's curse to investigate her murder, but the investigation doesn't involve much. Toby tastes the dead woman's blood to see what happened in her last minutes (that at least was cool, even if we find out at the very end of the book that the memories were 'somehow' tampered with), and then Toby sneaks into the dead woman's office and finds a Maguffin. Then it's just Toby getting shot and rescued until she discovers The Awful Truth from a character who acts as a deux ex machina, and then she fails to shoot the bad guy. That's pretty much it. I know this is a fantasy and not a real murder mystery, but if you open with a dead body, you really do need to lay down some clues for your supposedly former-PI and fairy knight to investigate. Toby doesn't even figure out to talk to the deux ex machina character on her own. Someone else tells her to, and tells her why, and sends her magically to the character's front door.

I actually don't like writing negative reviews, especially for books that aren't badly written. Rosemary and Rue caught me at a bad time--I've read a lot of books recently with the same flaws and this one was just the last straw. I think I'm going to be a little more picky with the next several books I read. If I don't like it, I'll just stop reading.

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Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco

It's not that I didn't like Unshapely Things, it's just that I never connected with it very deeply. I finished reading the book last night, but when I sat down to write this post I had to think just to recall the main character's name.

Connor Gray is a druid, a former bigwig in the Boston chapter of the Guild, which investigates crimes done by fairies, elves, and other fey. After an accident that lost him most of his magical powers, though, he's down on his luck and helping the Boston police on a freelance basis. The current investigation is of a string of murders of fairy prostitutes, murders that seem to be building to some kind of ritual that may be related to the Guild itself.

I had trouble figuring out the worldbuilding in the book, which I think was compounded by a certain lack of description in general. I never got a good idea of what Connor looked like, and I certainly never figured out why druid in this world is a separate species, not a job description. The fairies and elves didn't seem that much different from humans, either. Although Connor lives in a part of Boston dubbed the Weird because of all the fey residents, I never got a feeling of otherworldliness or strangeness.

The plot was interesting, though. I didn't guess the murderer, although I knew perfectly well who the murderer wasn't. Connor never figures that out, though, until the very end. Connor is pretty dumb. He walks into traps, sometimes even after he realizes this is probably a trap. How dumb can you get? I got very frustrated with him every time he followed a line of thinking that was glaringly wrong, which was much of the time. I found it hard to believe that he was ever a Guild investigator of any repute, even with lots of powers to draw on.

Connor also isn't a very sympathetic character, or maybe I just couldn't connect with him. I found him standoffish with everyone, including me-the-reader. Many of the minor characters are more interesting than he is, including Stinkwort the flit--think pixie--and one of Connor's former coworkers who helps him with some research. I might have liked the book better if it was about those two.

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Lightbreaker by Mark Teppo

"From newcomer Mark Teppo comes an explosive, action-packed occult thriller combining Western magick, Hermetic traditions, and shamanism." That's from the back cover.

Explosive... well, there are several kabooms, and thousands of casualties, so I suppose that's accurate enough. Action-packed is pressing it a little--but then I read Conan books so the bar I expect an author to clear in order to merit action-packed is perhaps a tad high. Yes it's a thriller insofar as the main character is effectively a detective and there are periodic motiviation shifts in major characters. But the important thing in that blurb is the word occult, combined with the last few nouns.

I'll give Teppo his due in one regard: every urban fantasy author strains himself to establish some kind of credibility for his alternate world, and Teppo has chosen well. He's picked out tidbits from every major religion (and most minor ones) and taken a good swing at building a coherent theme from them, using the result to bolster his universe. After a mystic exercise with his girlfriend goes tragically wrong, the MC's soul is partly ripped from his body (ouch) and he is thrown headlong into the world of the psychic and the divine. Delving into philosophy helps him come to understand what's happening, and selling antiques helps pay the bills--until his girlfriend resurfaces years later, and the story picks up.

Okay, good enough for UF. Many authors take the all-encompassing route of trying to explain away vampires and werewolves, sprites and pixies, trolls and goblins and all of our long and varied myths; Teppo doesn't, introducing instead only the soul as a physical thing and the human Will as an element of the divine. Not bad. (Full disclosure: zombies are still fair game: they're the husks left after the soul has been removed. Yeah, we've got lots of zombies here.)

But although the premise is good, and the MC's particular hash of abilities is clever (the "chorus" of human souls he employs does a lot for the story), he's also a whining douche-bag rabbit for much of the book. For three chapters running he'll spend all his time looking for a way to leave town, then he'll get his ass kicked, and finally he'll immolate a dozen people and walk out unscathed while pronouncing himself ready for anyone.

But wait, that's not all! I haven't even gotten to the important bit yet. Here it is: if you took out every pages-long half-baked philosophy-jumbling treatise from this book, the book would be half its length (and a lot more clear). Fully half the book consists of the author acting like a freshman philosopher who is desperate to impress a date, pulling out every reference to every religious belief that he can muster just in case he'll hit the right combination and get lucky for the night. The author's clearly intending this to be world-building, and to some extent it does work that way, but it's overkill to such a degree that it's mostly just a distraction from what would otherwise be a pretty good first novel.

For all that, this one was still good enough that I found myself looking for it to read during meals, which is pretty much my baseline for do-I-buy-the-sequel. But if author can't stick to his theme more and his philosophy less in the next book, I probably won't finish it.

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Master of None by Sonya Bateman

Gavyn Donatti is a thief. At the beginning of Master of None, he's on the run from thugs employed by a man who hired Donatti to steal an antique knife for him. Donatti did--but then he lost the knife.

Donatti is attempting to escape when a man appears and rescues him. Ian, it turns out, is a djinn. He tells Donatti he's there to help him achieve his life's purpose, but the reality is much different, as Donatti finds out slowly. Donatti is the mortal descendant of Ian himself, and Ian needs his help to track down another djinn who wants to rule the world. Or something close enough to that, anyway. The plot is basically a nonstop car chase for two-thirds of the book, and then it's a long confrontation that essentially takes place in one room.

Everyone in the book, including Donatti himself, repeatedly calls him a loser. I kept waiting for his hidden smarts to show, but they never do. He reveals abilities when Ian teaches him how to do things that djinns can do, but he never proves that he's particularly clever. He's a nice enough guy, but he's not exactly hero material and he never comes across as a hero even when he's doing heroic stuff. He's just going through the motions because that's what the author needs him to do.

That's a problem with most of the book. Events happen not because they grow out of previous events, but because the plot needs them to happen. There are a lot of characters along for the car chases and they all argue constantly, usually about why they shouldn't have to do what someone else told them to do--and then they screw things up so that the plot can advance. Donatti does a lot of screwing up. If the characters get too stuck, a little bit of magic saves the day, but if things start going too smoothly, the magic runs out. This happens over and over and over again. I felt kind of sorry for Bateman's characters by the end, particularly poor Donatti.

Donatti takes more abuse in this book than any character I think I've ever encountered. From the opening pages to the very end, he's constantly hit, kicked, shot, tasered, smacked around, tortured, insulted, and beat up. I question the need for the extended torture scenes, which I thought went on for too long for no particular purpose except to show that the bad guy is really bad. So much happens to Donatti, in fact, that I eventually stopped registering it. It doesn't slow him down appreciably; if he gets too knocked around, Ian heals him, unless the plot requires him to stay down for a little while. Because I stopped caring about the damage dealt to Donatti, I stopped caring about Donatti's problems too. He didn't seem particularly concerned with them either.

Despite the lackluster plot, I did like a lot about the book. Donatti's relationship with his sometime girlfriend Jazz is believable (even if I found Jazz really, really, really annoying and largely unbelievable as a character), and Ian's long-distance relationship with his wife is moving. I liked Ian, for that matter; his motivations and personality are both much more powerful and interesting than Donatti's are. His weaknesses made him appear much stronger than Donatti, who basically just functions as a punching bag--getting hit and bouncing back without lasting damage. If I read the sequel, it'll be because I want to find out what happens to Ian, not Donatti.

I just didn't care enough about Donatti's situation or the complicated political problems of the djinn world to invest too much into the book. I could have put it down at any point and never come back to it, and I'd never have wondered what happened in the end. I didn't find the ending especially satisfying, either, since it should have happened about 50 pages earlier--except that poor loser Donatti screwed up again so that the plot would drag out that much longer.

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Death Blows by DD Barant

Death Blows is the sequel to Dying Bites. This is a series of books with the most generic titles imaginable. Fortunately, the books are much more memorable.

In the first book, FBI criminal profiler Jace Valchek was yanked into an alternate world to help track down an insane serial killer. The population of the world she's been brought to is 99% vampires and werewolves, 1% humans. In this book, she's got another serial killer to track down--a murderer who seems to be connected with magic-enhanced comic books, a band of superheroes who turn out to be real, and not one but about 500 secret societies.

Seriously, there are so many secret societies that I stopped being able to keep them apart. I also had trouble keeping track of the conspiracies and counter-conspiracies. About halfway through the book, my interest sagged so much I almost just gave up. By the time I got to the two separate instances of (to paraphrase) "it's time you were told the real truth," I was just annoyed that the real truth had been held back for so damn long. It doesn't help that, yes, this book is in present tense like the first one was. It continually threw me out of the story, particularly when I came back to it after setting it aside for a while.

The world Barant has built is fascinating, but it's not a lot of fun. Humans are an endangered species, preyed on by vampires and werewolves--the insulting term for humans is "OR," original recipe. Barant does a great job building the tension between Jace's professional responsibilities and her personal difficulties adjusting to a world where she's considered prey or someone to be pitied; the professional and personal overlap a lot, causing even more tension. Jace has made a few friends in her new world, but ultimately she just wants to get home again.

But. The last paragraph? Those issues do not resolve or change in this book, and indeed barely apply to the plot at all. While Death Blows is mostly entertaining, I dislike having to essentially march in place, with the real plot--Jace tracking down the one person whose arrest can get her a ticket home--sidelined for an entire book. I dislike even more that the major theme of racism--because that's essentially what this is all about, except that it's more species-ism in this case--isn't given more than a quick stir before being left to simmer some more. I know this is a series and the overarching themes can't be resolved in one book or even a few, but I'd like some hint that Barant intends to resolve them at all, and that she has plans to that effect. Oh, and she can stop writing in present tense whenever she likes.

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The Better Part of Darkness by Kelly Gay

I started this one late last night--like, "read the first chapter before bed" kind of late--and finished it tonight. That really sums up the thing: it's light-weight, keeps moving at a good clip, and is compelling enough to keep the reader from doing other (no doubt more important) things.

Being modern urban fiction, there's a lot in here that borrows heavily from--or at least resonates strongly with--other contemporary series. Fortunately, there are enough differences to keep it from feeling at all like a knock off.

The setting first, since that's probably the most novel part. Some brilliant scientist managed to rip a hole in dimensions--never mind that, okay?--and discovered that there are at least two other worlds out there, populated with living beings and complex societies and all that. One, Elysia, is a rough analog to what we call heaven; the other, Charbydon, is a bit like hell. The theory is that our old heaven-and-hell mythos came about long ago when the worlds still mingled. Now that the dimensional rip thing has happened, they're mingling again. Creatures from the other worlds are coming here in some quantity, though Elysia won't let many humans go through to there (and no one really wants to go to Charbydon). It's a little hokey, sure, but it's easily as stable a premise as any other UF series builds on.

Then there's the protagonist: a tough-as-nails human female cop working in an "integration task force"--that is, a division that's supposed to help with human/nonhuman problems. Sound a little like Murphy from Dresden? Not dissimilar. Ex-husband, attachment problems, etc. Except that the MC here is turning weird: after a death and mysterious resurrection, she's picked up inexplicable and erratic superpowers (maybe a little like Greatest American Hero, if you remember that show, but with more death and blood and stuff).

And the "urban" part. Has to be a big city, right? We've got series based in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York... this one's in Atlanta. It doesn't really feel at all like Atlanta, though, except for the one throw-away reference to Georgia Tech students. Where Dresden posits a "Chicago underworld" composed of sunken houses' and businesses' first floors and tunnels, here there's an "Atlanta underground". This one's a little more plausible, though: it's closer to a Chinatown than anything, with no hidden entrances and shops that cater to three worlds' worth of people.

Some of the characters' reactions plucked a foul chord or two, and the triumphant resolution sounded a little sour: the final battle seemed a little easy, for example, with the big baddie doing totally nada. And a lot of strings were left untied, but that's forgivable since this is clearly the start of a series.

Anyway, if you're into urban fantasy this is probably a good one to pick up. I'll be buying the sequel.

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