magic

The Palace Job

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The Palace Job by Patrick WeekesSo I rarely go for straight up fantasy novels. I really prefer urban fantasy as my addiction of choice. I like to see how writers like Jim Butcher, Richard Kadrey and Simon R. Green mix the fantastical with the ‘real’ world. That being said, I really enjoyed this book The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes. It is pretty straight up fantasy but I did question whether it was some really far future, post-apocalypse thing as French was at one point referred to as an ‘old language’. To be fair, French is a fairly old language by even our standards but the way it was referred to in the book made me the old as in a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away rather than Middle Ages sort of old.

At any rate, we start off the book with our main characters Loch and her trusty sidekick Kail (I think that was how it was spelled, though it would be funny if it were spelled like the veggie) locked up in the most impossible to escape prison of the time. Its Alcatraz, you could say. This prison is located directly beneath the floating city of Heaven’s Spire and it is, in fact, the job of the prisoners to clean the crystals that keep the city afloat.

Loch and Kail ended up there for illegally attempting to enter Heaven’s Spire (for a sort of reference, Heaven’s Spire is a bit like Elysium, only the wealthiest get to live there and visiting is damn near impossible). They were set up to get arrested and Loch is only trying to regain something that rightfully belongs to her, an Elven scroll that will allow her and Kail to live comfortably. They had fought in a war (for the winning side) and had been declared killed in action. Rather hard to hold down a job when you’re dead.

Loch plans a brilliant escape with the help of Kail and another inmate. Once that is done, Loch continues to plot the heist she had originally planned on, with new people that she could trust. Of course, being escaped convicts, they do get the law coming down after them. Justicar Pyvic is considered a very neutral and trustworthy Justicar (my take on Justicars is that they’re rather like Judge Dredd, sort of a police/judge rolled into one but I could be wrong). Unfortunately. he has the bungling warden of the prison along for the ride and the man just keeps letting their quarry escape.

There is quite a bit of Simon R. Green-esque dry humor in this book, which I love but there is also just some upfront ‘blue’ language. Kail, in particular, is a fan of the your mom jokes. He knows at least one in every language and absolutely must taunt his opponent with one before engaging. There’s a ‘unicorn’ who continually tries to hook up with virgins (once she’s had them and they’re no longer virgins, she’s no longer interested).  This is like Ocean’s 11 meets fairy tales. It is quite entertaining and there’s another book coming out in a month or two. 🙂 I think this wouldn’t be for everyone, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Rating: solid B.

Kate Daniels

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Kate Daniels seriesA while ago I read this anthology called Dark and Stormy Knights. In it was this short story featuring a mercenary named Kate Daniels. The story was called A Questionable Client and Kate was hired to protect a very wealthy person from some Russian magic users. I really enjoyed this story but I didn’t know if this was a one off short like a lot of what ends up in these urban fantasy anthologies or if it was part of a series.

It turns out that it was sort of a prequel short story for the Kate Daniels series by husband and wife writers Ilona Andrews. I’d never checked this series out before and I’m rather glad I did. Kate Daniels et al exist in a world where magic and technology exist in waves. When magic is up, no technology works. This means anything from an automatic gun (why, I don’t know) to electric lights and vehicles (phones occasionally work though no one knows why). When technology is up, nothing magic works (cars that run on magic, fey lanterns, wards, spells). Because of the unpredictability of these switch offs, things like planes and tall buildings are no-nos. Magic eats tall buildings apparently.

This is a sort of post-magical-apocalypse world where magic users, shifters and other magical creatures exist. In this world, vampires are blank puppets run by so called Masters of the Dead (which I take to mean necromancers).  There are more types of shifters than just werewolves. Take for example one of the main characters, the Beast Lord. He is a were-lion which is apparently quite rare. The Beast Lord (Curran) controls all the shifters in the Atlanta area (anywhere from 3-1200 at any given time) to keep them from going ‘loupe’ (feral) so that humans don’t kill them.

The main character of the series is, obviously, Kate Daniels, who starts out as a mercenary and ends up as a liaison between the Mercenary Guild and the Order of Merciful Aid (they’ll help anyone but they could end up killing the client if they deem him/her/it a danger to humanity). She was raised to be a killer and she’s good at it. She’s got a goal she’s working toward and she will do it eventually.

Kate is one of those bad ass chicks that stays bad ass the whole time, even when she eventually decides that yes she does have a thing for Beast Lord Curran. She doesn’t just roll over and play the damsel in distress, which I love. A lot of these so called strong female characters out there will be strong…until a man gets in the picture. Then all of a sudden she can’t figure out when end of the sword to use (hint: its the pointy end). To be fair, she does have to get rescued by Curran from time to time BUT more often than not its because she saved his bacon first and is so near death that she can’t save herself.

I really enjoyed this series and plan on doing a more in depth review of each book. There is action, there is snark and there is just enough romance to make things interesting without it being all about the sex (which doesn’t happen until book 3-4 by the way). I highly, highly recommend these books as I burned though all of them in about a week. I’m hoping I can pick up the other short stories without buying the anthologies that they’re a part of, but we’ll see. Rating: A+

Hazardous Goods

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I am a big reader. I love Clive Cussler’s action/adventure stuff and I love urban fantasy and steampunk. The trouble is, I read very quickly and I often find that I have to wait months or a year to read the next novel in a series I’m reading (Dresden Files, the Hollows etc). Or a series has just ended (Sookie Stackhouse). So I have to troll through Amazon to find new stuff and often times have to go on very short preview chapters or just the descriptions of other people.

Sometimes I strike out. And sometimes I find a hidden gem like Hazardous Goods (Arcane Transport) by John Mackie. This book takes place in Toronto, Canada, which isn’t a place many if any of my urban fantasy books have taken place. It centers on a business called (*gasp*) Arcane Transport. They transport goods and items for businesses in the Toronto area. This can be a great many items from small to large.

Donnie Elder has just lost his job is the normal world. Coming to his aid is an old family friend who runs a transport service a la FedEx or UPS but smaller. This man is getting up there in years and is looking for a junior partner who is eventually going to take over the business. Enter Donnie.

Donnie is very much a skeptic. He doesn’t believe in magic or the things they transport. His business partner takes him on his first rounds in the business and unluckily enough, they get robbed. It puts the elder man in the hospital and puts Donnie in charge.

So now there are shenanigans of the new-to-the-job-and-finding-magic-is-real types. Add to that the fact that Donnie is bound and determined to get the stolen item back, then you have a sort of detective without the detective training thing going on.

It was an interesting first book and it has potential. It was, unfortunately, short so I blew threw it in a manner of hours. 🙂 So I’d rate it a solid B. There’s another book coming eventually but not soon enough.

Drynn

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Drynn is a book I stumbled across on Amazon while looking for something new to read. Written by Steve Vera, it throws small town Montana sheriff Skip Walkins into a world he is not at all prepared for. See, entombed in this small town cemetery is a nasty, extra-dimensional bad guy/demon type named Asmodeus the Pale. This bad guy was entombed by a number of mage warriors from his dimension (called Theia) called Shardyn knights.

These Shardyn were trapped on Earth after defeating Asmodeus because Earth has no magic. Thinking that, they made lives for themselves among humans and hoped to find a way back. Except something happened. A killer by the name of Donovan (not sure why that seems strange to me but it does) makes his way to this small town in Montana for some reason he doesn’t fully comprehend. See, Donovan was legally dead for some time and when he came back, he came back changed.

Something about Asmodeus called Donovan to Montana, where he inadvertently released the demon. So Skip has to chase both demon and Donovan across the country. Asmodeus wants revenge on the the Shardyn knights and he’ll stop at nothing.

All in all, I was really surprised by this book. Some of the characterizations were a little ham-fisted I thought. Skip not only gave up a life as a good detective with Philly PD, he also happened to be a crack sniper for the Marines! Of course! But I was pleased to see that while there was a bit of sexual tension there was no actual sex! An urban fantasy book with no sex! Holy shit, I’m hallucinating. Now, I have nothing against sex but it is nice to see that an author can go without it.

Vera left the end of the book in a way that clearly says he is looking to continue in at least one more story.  And I am actually looking forward to it. So it was a good read and cheap on Amazon Kindle but Vera could use a little polishing as a writer. Rating: B.

Geekomancy

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So I was just going through my Amazon recs and came across a book called Geekomancy by Michael R. Underwood. Being that I am a geek, I was intrigued. So I downloaded the sample to my Kindle and away we go. I was a little worried by the ridiculously complicated name of the main character which I can’t remember the whole of so I’ll just let you know that she’s Ree Reyes.

I’m not entirely sure one has to be a geek to enjoy this book but it would definitely help to understand it. This book is made up of mostly pop/geek culture references. I personally love when my favorite writers sneak in a pop culture reference (Jim Butcher, I’m looking at you) but this might be a tad much for some. The character of Ree tends to think of things in a  geeky way. Like breaking down people into D&D character sheet traits (strength #, wisdom #, intelligence #, charisma # etc).

She works at a theme cafe called Cafe Xombi that provides coffee, pastries and comics (among other things). She’s got the standard urban fantasy trops of having recently broken up with her boyfriend, her mother left when she was a child, her father is poor/hard-working and in every way supportive and she has a dream job (being a screen writer) that just isn’t meant to be. Just once I would like to see a female character (or any main character I suppose) be in a stable relationship, have both parents and a job that they love and don’t lose.

Aaaaaaaanyway, moving on. Ree’s post-break-up mopiness is interrupted by the arrival of a man who insists on being known as Eastwood (*sigh*), who is the one who inadvertently introduces her into the world of the weird. Now here is where I rather like the world that Underwood is creating because I haven’t seen something like it before.

Back around the time of the Renaissance, those people who could do magic influenced how those who could not do magic see magic. What I mean is, they created this thing called The Doubt. Because of the books and general enlightenment of the era, those who did magic basically put a big, multi-generational “someone else’s problem” spell on, well, Muggles for lack of a better term.

Someone who has magic has a type of magic. Werewolves are Atavists, who use magic to bring out the beast in them…turns out they have to use rubber werewolf suits as a focus but hey. Eastwood can basically use comics and other geek memorabilia to gain powers. The rarer the item, the longer the power will last. Like a Nightcrawler card will allow him to teleport briefly. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Ree’s power is emulation, which would also rock. She can watch something or read something and gain the ability to do that thing. Want to fight like Buffy? Watch Band Candy. Want to dodge attacks? Watch The Matrix. Want to investigate a crime? Well, that’s all on BBC’s Sherlock (which you should totally watch BTW, because AWESOME doesn’t cover it). It only lasts for a little while and it doesn’t make her bullet or wound proof but hey, she can kick some booty.

So Eastwood has her looking into some virgin suicides that he is apparently investigating. Only investigating is a rather loose term. Its more like he’s looking for them specifically. He needs to collect the souls of five virgin suicides to get his lady love back from a demon (who is so ridiculously named I didn’t even try to remember it). And who is our mystery love? I’ll give you three guesses. No? Enter trope long-lost-mom.

Oh what is a girl to do? Well, read and find out. 🙂 This is a geek’s fantasy. I’m telling you if I could suddenly dive into an urban fantasy book, I think it would be this one. How cool would it be to be able to fight like Westley and Inigo Montoya simply by watching The Princess Bride? I know right?! But it is a really trope-y book, just so you’re forewarned. I enjoyed it enough that I would read another book in this series (if there is a series-it was certainly left open for a follow up). Rating B. His writing could use a little work. I feel like there was a lot of exposition in this book and that any follow ups would be smoother.

Dancing Deliliah

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I read a couple of anthologies recently, Hex Appeal and Blood Lite III, and I came across a short story by Carole Nelson Douglas. I can’t remember the name of the story but it featured a woman by the name of Delilah Street and I had been intrigued by it. So I went off to Amazon and found the first story of Douglas’ that featured Delilah Street called Dancing with Werewolves.

This world starts out intriguingly. It starts out with young orphan Delilah (Why always orphans? Why don’t the main characters of these books ever have a happy childhood? That would be interesting to read), and her orphan peers waiting to see what happens at Y2k. Instead of nothing happening as it did in real life, there was some sort of great magical awakening. Douglas was somewhat vague as to what this was however. I wasn’t clear if the magic already existing in the world just swelled to the point where humans couldn’t ignore it any more or if the magical creatures in the world came out of the supernatural closet. However, I’m willing to pass this vagueness off as being the poor recollections of a child, which Delilah was at the time.

Delilah Street grew up into an investigative reporter. In Kansas. Having lived in a mid-western state, I can only imagine that being as thrilling as it sounds. Delilah tried and failed at dating the vampire anchor at her local news station and his new squeeze, the weather witch, promptly sent a tornado to destroy Delilah’s home. Ooookay then. No explanations as to why the vamp or the weather witch were suddenly so keen to get rid of her but its was a convenient plot device to get Delilah to move on to…Las Vegas!

Here she has a magical encounter with some random dude in a park that gives them both an orgasm of a life time….Really? Already? Trope-tastic magical encounter with sexy male supe, check! Let’s move on to the next cliche. The magical encounter is observed by some rich shut in from his conveniently next door home that is bristling with surveillance. He offers her a job investigating old Vegas crimes. Why? Because he’s a TV producer of course! And he runs the umpteenth version of CSI. Okay, that I found funny. 🙂

So she starts investigating the crime that induced her magical sex ride with the sexy supe (Ric). Which leads her to equally sexy but definitely a bad-guy, probably a vamp but will never admit it, Snow. An albino vampire, he owns the Inferno Hotel (as in Dante’s Inferno). And he has an immediate thing for Delilah. Of course. But the supernatural run ins don’t stop with him. She has a run in with the werewolf mafia, zombies with magical overlays to make them appear as old cinema stars, and weird faerie type creatures.

I almost felt like she was trying to squeeze every trope imaginable into a story that was about 300 pages. The short story was far more intriguing than this longer book. There are several more books in this series and I don’t think I’m going to read them. It was a promising premise but I feel like a writer such as Simon R. Green or Jim Butcher could have done so much more with it. Rating: D-D+. This is harsher than I usually am, but I feel you’d probably be better off skipping this one. Unless you like trope heavy stories, in which case have at it and to each their own. I love cheesy sci-fi movies after all, so who am I to judge? 😉