urban fantasy

Dancing Deliliah

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

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? 😉

Live and Let Drood

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

Oh.  My. God. Simon R. Green has done it again. Live and Let Drood is the latest in the Secret Histories arc featuring Eddie Drood, secret agent. Eddie has just recovered from his last mission to Castle Frankenstein against the Immortals. He’s returning home with his lady love, Molly Metcalf, when he runs into something he never thought possible: a completely destroyed Drood Hall.

With his family seemingly dead, Eddie goes looking for clues in the ruined hall for revenge. Who could possibly be powerful enough to take down the mighty and paranoid Drood family? Eddie has to find out what happened to his family and get revenge. But not all is as it seems and some questions from Eddie’s past are going to be answered while more are raised.

I’m not going to give too much away since this is a brand spankin’ new book. But it is fantastic! And I’m happy to report that it is NOT the last of the Secret Histories. There is at least one more due out called (at the moment) Casino Infernale. So get this book! A+ And if anyone knows of any books similar to Simon R. Green, please let me know!

Under Wraps

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

*Here be some spoilers. In fact, please just assume that my posts include spoilers. I try not to but you never know.*

So I read two new books by Hannah Jayne called Under Wraps andUnder Attack. They both feature “plain Jane” heroine Sophie Lawson, a worker for the Underworld Detection Agency. This agency is really misnamed because it isn’t so much a police force as a social security network for all the supernatural set. If you want to live/work in the “above ground” (San Fran in this case), you have to get your credentials through the UDA.

These books are a bit simply written. Epic it is not. They’re shorter novels than I’m used to reading as well. The first one was interesting enough for me to read the second book but I’m not entirely certain if I’m interested in reading the third, Under Attack.

Sophie Lawson is the main human in this series and the thing that seems to set her apart from the other humans, and thereby accepted by the supes, is that she is immune to magic. Very trope-y. And it seems that the only other creature in this universe that is immune to magic is Satan. Of course. Why not? Very, very trope-y. I think Jayne could have gone with some other ‘power’ for Sophie Lawson and made her a much more interesting character. Oh yeah, and Lawson is obsessed with sex. Like every other to-herself thought is about how one male character or another features in her fantasy. It doesn’t move the plot along at all. Jayne really didn’t need to put that in and yet, she did.

Under Wraps is about world domination. Again, of course. And Sophie is one of the keys to gaining world domination. Of course. The redeeming bits of the book are the comedic elements. I really liked the over the top vampire Nina, who feeds on bags of bloods and turns her hunting instincts to haute couture instead of humans. She and her vamp nephew Louis (or Vlad as he insists on being called) are pretty funny characters.

And there is the obligatory sexy male lead, Alex Grace, a fallen angel. He’s tracking down the baddie to wants to take over the world, since he’s set up as an FBI agent. And Alex has the obligatory secret as well, which turns out he’s looking for some sort of powerful object that he lost while an angel in heaven. This object is called the Vessel of Souls and it contains all the souls waiting to be distributed out to a newly born person. If someone ‘breaks’ this object, they could win the war between good and evil, so a lot of creatures are looking for it. I’ll give you three guesses as to what, or who, this object is but you’re only going to need one.

Under Attack is about a different, evil fallen angel searching out the Vessel of Souls for the dark side, um…evil side. The evil fallen angel is named Ophelia and she is Sophie Lawson’s long lost half sister. They share the same daddy, who may or may not be Satan (we haven’t seen Satan pop up saying, ‘yes, she’s mine’ yet). Ophelia is bat shit crazy and enjoys torture. She went over to the dark side a long time ago and now really wants to screw over everyone, even baby sis Sophie. Especially baby sis Sophie.

Under Attack reveals that the Vessel of Souls, in whatever physical incarnation it has, always has seven guardians. Six of Sophie’s guardians are already dead. Number seven is a sexy, English fireman. Just once I’d really like to see a male character as just average looking. Maybe with a plain old desk job. A lot of male characters either seem to be drop dead gorgeous or ugly as sin/badly scarred. A little originality people!

At any rate, I’d rate Under Wraps a C+, interesting enough concept but not very well fleshed out. Under Attack is more like a C-/D, pretty darn trope-y. It is really making me look forward to Simon R. Green’s Live and Let Drood. Now he is a good writer!

One Salt Sea, Again

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

I just reread the Toby Daye novel One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire and I fell in love with it again. This is the latest published Toby Daye novel and I cannot wait for the next one to come out. Toby has been given the title (and knowe) of Countess of Goldengreen. This previously was held by someone who had been murdered in the first book. The Queen of Mists gave it to Toby out of spite. But that isn’t Toby’s immediate problem.

The immediate problem is that Toby has been tapped by her aunt, the Luidaeg (apparently pronounced Lu-shak or similar according to the handy pronunciation guide), to stop a war between the Undersea and the land dwelling fae. The Luidaeg is incredibly powerful, being the first born of Oberon and Maeve…but apparently she cannot do anything to harm harm the children of Titania (most land-dwelling fae). I see this as a convenient way to rein in her abilities so she doesn’t become the deus ex machina of the series.

On top of that, Tybalt is back and sniffing around Toby. I really hope they shag in the next book because the UST is so thick between the two of them. There didn’t seem to be much chemistry written between Toby and her chosen love interest Connor, a Selkie from Half Moon Bay. It just seemed like she chose him because 1) Tybalt disappeared after the last book because the Cait Sidhe were decimated by poison and 2) She’d had something forbidden with Connor before she’d turned into a fish (in the first book).

I thought this was really the best book in the series so far. I enjoyed the plot quite a bit and I really dig the character of the Luidaeg. She’s a bit like House in her temperament and she’s far too old to really care about what anyone thinks. I sincerely hope they explain why everyone is so afraid of her in an upcoming book. I’d rate this book as an A and I really, really can’t wait for the next one!

Anita Blake

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

I read the first 5-6 Anita Blake novels a while ago and I had to stop and change tracks. Not that I don’t like the books, since I’ve read up to Cerulean Sins now, but I just needed something different. So I did something I try hard not to do and I left Blue Moon in the middle of the book. I think I was just tired of Anita’s quirky sort of self righteousness. She kills monsters, she sleeps with monsters and yet…she hates them.

She’s got several men on the hook and but she can’t decide which one to stick with. I find that a bit selfish, especially when she started out going “no sex EVER” (a now broken rule) and “not human=monsters” (also a now broken rule). She’s got a bazillion rules for a guy who either wants to sleep with her or date her. And some how it is always the man’s fault when he trips up over one of the rules. Which I find unfair. How is a man supposed to know not to do something when you don’t tell him not to?

On the other hand, it is nice to see a competent woman in the main character role. She knows her strengths and her weaknesses. She knows how to kill the bad guys (she is the Executioner after all) and is more than willing to do so. And yet we’ve seen her hurt and squeamish. She isn’t super human. She isn’t vapid. And I like that. It always seems that when the main character is a woman, she’s absolutely clueless as to what she is and/or what’s going on.

So Blue Moon is basically Anita coming to the rescue of her then boyfriend (one of two at the moment) Richard when he gets framed for rape in Tennessee. She has to get him out, face down the local pack and local vamps and figure out why he was framed in the first place. Not bad as a book, good enough for me to read the next book, Obsidian Butterfly.

I really liked Obsidian Butterfly. It features the character Edward (a.k.a.-Death, Ted Forrester). He’s a sociopath bounty hunter who kills exclusively monsters or interesting prey. He has made appearances before and he was Anita’s teacher. I like Edward because I like a lot of the bad guy characters in books and because he’s entertaining in his way. He is what he is and he really doesn’t care what you think of him. But he has a monster program where his alter ego, Ted Forrester, lives in New Mexico. Anita is a monster expert and possibly a friend. I find this one the best I’ve read so far simply because Edward was a main focus.

So all in all, I’d rate Blue Moon about a B- but Obsidian Butterfly an A.

A Perfect Blood

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

**SPOILERS**

So I just plowed through Kim Harrison’s latest Rachel Morgan novel, A Perfect Blood. It was good and yet in parts of it I wanted to wring the main character’s neck. We’ve had quite a few of these books and apparently Rachel Morgan still goes off half-cocked with no plan and no back up only to be surprised when she gets captured by the baddies!

In this book, she’s essentially spayed herself magically speaking because she’s afraid of how people will treat her as a full powered demon. Not to mention she doesn’t want to live permanently in the ever after with Al and the other wacko demons. So for half the book or so we watch Rachel trying to continue working as she had before…but without any of her demon abilities because while she’s come out as a demon, apparently she just mentally has not accepted that her life will change.

And now we have a new group of bad guys who, while clearly focusing on Rachel for something, are more into the destruction of anything non-human rather than Rachel specifically. This makes a nice change from the previous books where the bad guys seem intent on wiping Rachel out simple because she’s Rachel.

At any rate, her life is changing and she’s getting frustrated that she can’t keep up. Ivy and Jenks are moving on with their respective others and Rachel is just a bit jealous because she doesn’t have one. She’s trying to talk herself out of a clear crush on elf Trent Kalamak and I’m note entirely certain why. He’s a bit of a dick, sure, but he’s also helped her out of quite a bit of trouble. Those two need to shag and get it over with already.

Eventually Rachel reaches a breaking point where she HAS to regain her demon powers by removing her charmed silver bracelet. From there, she ends up kicking her ass in her usual Three Stooges way. Let’s face it, she can fight and she can spell but she really has little common sense. She never waits for backup and she purposefully limits herself by dampening her powers. I really do like these books but sometimes Rachel Morgan just seems a little too cliche to me.

Rating: B–B+

Doubletake

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

**SPOILERS** Do not read if you don’t want to have some plot revealed!

Rob Thurman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors. I really like her Cal Leandros and Trickster books. I just finished the latest Cal Leandros book, Doubletake. It starts out with our favorite brother Cal and Niko (I love this name by the way, don’t know why) getting hired by everyone’s favorite puck Robin Goodfellow to act as bouncers at apuck family reunion. If you think think your family reunions are awful, just imagine having 75 physical identical men, all con artists, trying to kill each other in the midst of an orgy. Yeah…just a bit disturbing and yet, funny as hell how it was written.

After that, we get introduced to Niko’s long lost father who is trying to get the brothers to help with some ancient Vayash (Romany clan) burden. No one believes that he’s here to reconcile with his son and everyone treats him quite like a leper. What is this man really after…? Read the book! Since it’s brand spankin’ new, I won’t give away the end! 😀

And then we find out what was in the empty cage at the end of the last book. A half Auphe who named himself Grimm who is trying to connect with Cal as a brother/fellow half-Auphe. Grimm is a total psycho who is bent on world domination. Yeah, a little cliche but its less that he wants to rule the world and more that he wants to tear it down and dance on the ashes. VERY good book and I can’t wait for the next one on either this series or the Trickster series. Rating: A+

Audiobooks?

/ crookedreviews / 2 Comments

Okay, so I love James Marsters voicing the Dresden Files audiobooks but I’m looking for some ideas for some other audiobooks in the urban fantasy genre. Can anyone out there recommend a good audiobook? I’m thinking about Stephen Fry reading the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or possibly one of the Nightside novels. Suggestions for iTunes welcome (I don’t have Audible)!

Archangel’s Consort

/ crookedreviews / 2 Comments

I rather like the Archangel books by Nalini Singh. They’re a very novel take on vampires and angels. One of the latest books is Archangel’s Consort. The plot is intriguing but I was rather disappointed by all the sex. Yeah, that’s right. The first book was rife with UST (unresolved sexual tension) between Guild Hunter Elena and Archangel Raphael. It took them a long time to get to the sex. In the second book, they were constricted because of Elena’s injuries. In this book, there wasn’t any constrictions and the sex didn’t move the plot along. At all. There could have been much, much less of it and the book would be better off.

That being said, it was interesting to see the introduction of Raphael’s mother, Caliane. Caliane, and an unknown number of ancient archangels, are in a state called Sleep. Yes with a capital S. It seems that when these immortals get bored they basically hibernate until they’re no longer bored or have cured whatever injury or madness has ailed them. And unfortunately, Caliane was mad when she hibernated.

When a Sleeper awakes, the power of the individual will set off calamities around the world. Strange weather patterns, earthquakes, tidal waves and even aberrant behavior in vampires and angels. Even archangels.  Since it is impossible for anyone to know who is waking with certainty, Raphael fears that it is his mother and that she is still mad. If she is, he would have to try and kill her. In this arc, no maddened angel or vampire is allowed to live. The trouble being, how does one kill an archangel who is a good fifty thousand years old an immeasurably powerful.

That is why fellow archangel Lijuan tries to convince Raphael to kill his mother before she wakes, in violation of one of angel kind’s deepest and oldest taboos. Unfortunately, Lijuan has ‘evolved’ into something that is far more demonic than angelic and therefore does not exude trustworthiness.

In any case, the story itself is quite interesting. If the sex had been toned down, I’d have given it an A, as it is I’ll have to give it a B because it annoyed me. There is more to urban fantasy than just sex. Look at The Dresden Files or The Nightside books. Sex is sprinkled in sparingly and they are awesome.

Sandman Slim

/ crookedreviews / Leave a comment

So I just picked up the new Sandman Slim novel Aloha From Hell and I realized that I didn’t review the last two books. The books are written by Richard Kadfrey and are sort of an old fashioned pulp mystery mixed with urban fantasy. The first novel was Sandman Slim (surprising, I know).

Sandman Slim’s name is James Stark. He doesn’t particularly like either moniker. Mostly he gets called Stark. You don’t really want to like him. He murders, he tortures, he cusses. He’s a thief. And he can walk through shadows and do magic. Stark has spent the last decade or so in Hell. And that isn’t a metaphor. He was the only living human in the whole of Hell. And he was the favored toy/gladiator of the Hellions, right up to Lucifer himself. When you’re immortal, new things are always fun.

We’re introduced to Stark as he wakes up in a flaming garbage pile in LA. This might be a bit redundant. 😉 His first act is to roll a guy for his clothes and money. The only thing on his mind is to kill the men who sent him down in the first place, people he’d once considered friends. In the mean time, he manages to pick up some new friends that include a 200 year old alchemist, a young woman working the counter at a video store, an archangel masquerading as a doctor and his assistant, a Jade named Candy. Jades are  a cross between vampires and spiders. They liquify the innards of their victims and suck it up.

His main focus is a man named Mason, the one who was personally responsible for sending Stark to Hell in the first place. The only problem is getting to him. He’s rich, he’s magically powerful and he’s more than slightly psychotic and paranoid. Not to mention the thug he has protecting him. Stark is definitely an anti-hero, but he’s good at it.

If you like darker, grittier books, this is one you should definitely pick up. Rating: A+