I'm fascinated by a particular sub-genre of what's known as Urban Fantasy. Urban Fantasy is that thing where the setting is the real world, but there’s a secret magical world. It’s broad and fuzzy, for examples: Charles De Lint's books are pure whimsy, Neil Gaiman’s "Neverwhere" is whimsy and self-discovery, China Mieville’s "Kraken" is horror/detective, while James Treadwell’s "Advent" series is more horror/suspense, and I suppose the "Underworld" movies with Kate Bekinsale count and they're all gothic-themed action. It's fuzzy, and not really a genre. Even so, there's a tight sub-genre with supernatural female detectives. There's no name for it yet, so I'm calling it Urban Fantasy Detective Romance. Here's what it is:
That sounds made-up and extremely specific, but it’s a real formula. I think the 90's "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" series kicked it off. That secret world is a little boring -- master vampires and werewolf packs -- basically a mix of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" and the World of Darkness role-playing game. Anita is human and her only special power is being the nation's only legally sanctioned vampire executioner. The series showed that you could sell books using a specific supernatural/mystery/romance formula. Sadly, it also established the dressing-up scene: pages and pages of her putting on revealing outfits, but with places to hide her weapons and most important, strategic bits to cover her monster-battle scars.
Nov 2016
I saw Seanan McGuire at a convention. She was in full "act like a fabulous author Guest of Honor" mode, and could not stop giggling about exploding hawiian rats and the tapeworm she ate on purpose. So, she doesn't take herself all that seriously, which is the right attitude for her books.
The world starts as the standard "every mythical creature you’ve even heard of is real". The twist is that the secret society keeping humans safe succeeded hundreds of years ago. They made the world safe for humans. And now they're killing harmless, even useful beasties (cyptids). Our heroine is from a break-away family devoted to the study and preservation of supernatural ecology, hunted by the now-evil monster-killing group.
The rest of the twist is inventing crazy creatures -- talking mice (that’s all they do) and dragon princesses which look human, breed asexually, live in groups and single-mindedly collect gold by working regular jobs, then buying the gold.
Personality-wise, our heroine fails to be insecure or mousy -- rather the opposite -- but she's got money problems and has trouble meeting guys since she works so much: protecting the harmless monsters of New York. Her famous renegade family name is like a magic spell to make monsters respect her. She's a waitress in a non-human topless club; and a contestant on "So you think you can dance." The family tradition is training in ninja skills since birth, including spider-manning (parkour) everywhere over rooftops. That feels sufficiently weird to make up for her being 100% human with no mystic powers.
The plot is a fine sprawl of mostly personal problems mixed in with the adventure: she has to help her telepathic non-human sister; the guy from the evil monster hunters is in town, and is smoking hot; and mutated human/lizard-men are using monster blood to power a world-blasting magic spell. What really puts this over as an urban fantasy female detective book is the big baddie: he turns out to be friendly. The evil lizards were worshiping him, but also keeping him sedated. A little friendly conversation, which no man would have considered, solves the crisis.
The rest of the series gives us more books with this character, but then we get more family members. There's her roller-derby younger sister, and then her brother. He’s a non-violent researcher, clumsy around women, with strong female role models -- but he's still written as a guy, blundering through his book as a big, dumb ape, occasionally listening to his girlfriend who's the brains of the operation.
Nov 2016
This one is a little too Romancey -- two men are fighting over her the entire book -- but otherwise it hits the bizarre secret world mash-up elements extra hard, including a SteamPunk setting.
The heroine is a female detective in Victorian London trying to make a name for herself, but insecure about being a commoner. And, of course, far too impulsive. She's human but somehow immune to magic, and heals very quickly. Later it's teased she may be part fairy creature. She can get advice from an all-powerful ghost wizard who haunts her, or have devices made by her (non-ghost) genius SteamPunk engineer friend.
Romance-wise, a powerful (also non-ghost) wizard is in love with her, along with her childhood friend who is now a police chief (in other words, her beaus are a rich noble and a brawny working man). She sleeps with the policeman to try to cure him of robotic were-wolfism (an old folk remedy?), but seems to prefer the sexy wizard.
The bad guy is a masterpiece of crazy mash-up: an (1)Ancient Evil banished by (2)Celtic shamen, who is trying to (3)impregnate women with demon babies using (4)robot (5)werewolfs recruited from a (6)noblemens' secret sex club. Take a moment to wonder how the book begins. You're correct if you said "she's called in to investigate women being molested by robot werewolves".
SteamPunk tends to handle female characters in two ways. One is having them smarter and stronger than any man. Yawn. The other is what this book does: she's told what women can't do at every turn, is treated like a fragile flower, but does all she can within those confines, including a few things a Victorian man couldn't get away with. If you like clever oppressed women, this has got it.
Nov 2016
This is another steampunk mashup in a "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" vein. The heroine is a free-lance police investigator who sometimes changes into her alternate aggressive form because her father is "Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and she inherited it. Changing shape instantly heals her, but her "Miss Hyde" form is extremely impulsive and her normal form constantly second-guesses herself.
Besides Dr. Jekyll, this swings for the fences in mash-ups. Jack the Ripper is in love with her; real-life computer pioneer Ada Lovelace is a robot who runs the secrete police along with an immortal Sir Isaac Newton. Her boyfriend is merely a werewolf secret policeman. Bad guy #1 is "A Picture of Dorian Grey", while future bad guy #2 is an evil version of reclusive government mastermind Mycroft Holmes.
The plot follows the rules pretty well: lots of personal problems, some are clues; stupidly impulsive behavior which sometimes advances the plot; romance which also advances the plot; worries about money. She even gets to attempt to reconcile with her partly estranged father.
Nov 2016
The backstory for the Agent of Hel series is that Niflheim, home of Helheim and the underworld ice-goddess Hel, including her dog Fenrir (all popular in 1980's Marvel comics) is now in Wisconsin. A big chunk of the North country is Hel's territory as far as secret magical things go. Newly chosen to represent Hel is a sweet, charming 20-something woman who doesn't really understand her job. She's supposed to resolve disputes and in general make sure nothing supernatural bothers Hel. Despite this all being Norse myth, we get the usual hodge-podge of non-Norse monsters.
As you'd guess, she's bad with boyfriends and extremely insecure. She feels as if she's just faking her way through adulthood. She doesn't really have any powers except for her "Agent of Hel" badge, but is secretly a half-demon (Norse mythology doesn't have demons, but whatever.) The town is pretty much Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls: lots of friendly people, many of whom know magic and are glad to help; or brew tea; or just talk since everyone knows everyone else.
We get a lovely minor plot involving a misunderstood "Monsters Inc" type creature which is supposed to be harmlessly frightening kids. We get another which takes lots of careful listening to witnesses, help from her friends, and having to trust a guy with whom her relationship may be going too fast. The main plot gets violent near the end -- big rockets, mercenaries, and an exploding giant monster -- but it's really the result of an argument between the bad guy (the bad woman, it turns out) and her husband, which our heroine helps smooth out.
Something that snuck up on me: Hel has given her a unique magical relic dagger. She just tucks it away. Much later, she realizes it's meant to be flashed like a badge. It never occurs to her that she could, you know, stab people with it, since violence never solved anything.
Nov 2016
The Harry Dresden series is a neat counter-example of why it's the urban fantasy female detective romance genre. He starts out the same as the women: he's a broke wizard/detective who protects humans from monsters. But he's a junior member of the Wizards' Council and resents it. Hmmm...a female character would have fought for that bit of recognition and the ability to contribute. Along with werewolves and necromancers we get three crazed sub-types of vampires (blood, sex, and, uh, torture?). The whole fairy world thing has plenty of detail, plus demons and so on. It's a legitimate steal-everything-but-make-it-your-own secret world.
Then onto the stories. They focus much more on fighting the main baddie: Harry doesn't visit his mom, or check out his sister's possibly seedy new boyfriend (in fact, he has no family!), or find a clue while searching for a spaghetti recipe in an ill-fated attempt to cook for a new love interest. He doesn't worry about maintaining his friendships and normal life since he has neither. He's more of a traditional burnt-out gumshoe. Back to the friends, he doesn't even get out much to talk to contacts for info. There's a magic skull in his basement for that.
His main problem solving skill is blasting things with magic. He has both kinds -- fire bolts and force bolts. That's his defining character trait (Harry Dresden -- as in the city that was famously firebombed at the end of WWII -- and he's a fire mage. Tasteless, but makes its point). Otherwise he rushes towards the most obvious clue and is easily distracted by anything shape-changed into a curvy body (of which there are lots). Like all true men, his magic is powered by rage. Sure, female detectives experience rage, but it makes them do something unlady-like -- not merely punch harder.
All-in-all it's a huge difference. The Dresden series is about a stereotypical schluby male. It's mostly an action series. Nothing wrong with that. The author sure goes all-out to develop the secret world and to follow up in future books. But it makes you realize how much the "real" UFDR genre is about how women can stop monsters as well as men while being true to 3rd wave feminism.
Nov 2016
So here’s the plot of the one book in this series I read: the main character has a pregnancy scare, but it could be due to her magical powers so she puts off taking a test. Afer the funeral of a murdered relative, she has to make all these excuses for why she can’t have alchohol, then more to her mom at home for why she isn’t guzzling coffee.
After beating up a guy trying to kidnap her, her boyfriend finally helps her take a test. It’s positive and he freaks out and runs. Then she stays with her mom after bad guys kill another relative and burn down her apartment, and hilariously there are all these cats at her mom's from a third murdered relative.
Later she gets blood all over herself from killing a bad-guy, so the other man who might be the father of her baby takes her home and lets her wear his clothes. She tells him about the baby, he’s excited about being a dad, and they bang.
But then she finds out her boyfriend only freaked because of a dark secret about his own mom. He asks her to marry, even after they find out she’s not really pregnant. They almost have a courtroom marriage with their new bodyguards as witnesses (the first bodyguard was lost in another bad guy attack.)
Then they both get kidnapped by a different guy who’s kids are being held by the Mob, so they use their magical powers to rescue the kids and catch those badguys. Back at home, Mom has even more cats from murdered aunts. Then her boyfriend proves she can count on him by helping capture the main bad guy. Finally, she and the other guy who wanted to marry her agree to stay friends. The End.
As you may have figured out, this is just a Romance novel. The plot is just an excuse to help her choose a husband. What should have given it away for me was the traditional romance cover: a woman in front, two male models real close on either side. I was fooled since the publisher is TOR, which doesn’t have a specific romance division.
What’s interesting is how a Romance author leaned into Urban Fantasy Detective Romance. The secret world is that some people can shape-change (all of the main characters), but only into people they've met enough to see their "aura", which you could then share with another shape-changer. Even that tiny amount is more than most Romances bother with. I think it’s touching.April 2017
This is book 7, "All Your Wishes", in a series billed as "paranormal romance." That's code for "straight-up Romance with a werewolf instead of a pirate" but the blurb made it sound like more than that. Besides being book 7, where a decent series might have gone bad, one of the original two authors has dropped out. So I expect this to be rough.
The overall backstory is that magic and science have coexisted for a long time. Stores sell real magical charms, there exist combo magi-tech items, police forces employ mages, anti-vampire fences are common, magic is taught at college, and so on. The secret world has been non-secret basically forever. That's new.
The main character is a 1/2-vampire, 1/2-siren (and 1/2-human?) detective, running her agency out of a former church. Her best friends and employees are a werewolf, a wizard and a ghost. Nothing special there. Going against tradition, she’s generally happy with her appearance -- vampires are a sexy pale and sirens are naturally beautiful. But she has personal problems. For one, sirens magically bring out the catiness in other women. For another, 1/2-vampires need to frequently eat gross baby food and smoothies, use lots of sunscreen, and lisp horribly when their fangs pop out. She was turned into one by an attack and is not happy about it. She's also cursed in a non-specific way.
Her boyfriend is a sexy mage with strong hands from a family of powerful mages, and also mobsters. They start off with a big unspecified argument that sounds like it could be trouble -- maybe about children -- we never find out. He has to leave to take care of his dying mother, and the extent of their romance is her calling to check on the mom. In the 1-year-later epilogue she gets together with a cute, minor character with whom she previously had no sparks. I'm guessing the absent writing partner handled the romance stuff?
The plot starts with a client who was told to contact her by his "oracle". She's then told to take the case by her oracle. Basically, character motivation is hard, so it's just oracles, OK? She also solves the case by doing something her oracle told her to do, and it's fine -- it's not as if an otherwise great book was ruined by the cop-out ending.
The plot involves some super-evil wizards from a previous book, including an evil wizard ghost sworn to kill her (also from a previous book) led by a super-powerful demon. We never find out their plot, but they free a super-powerful genie for it, who, shocker, gets out of hand and possesses the main character's body. It turns out to be a genie serial-killer of other genies who wants to kill the judge who sentenced it (strangely, the book jacket says it wants to free an evil genie army. Spoiler?)
At the very end, she wins by realizing she has friends. Literally just realizing. She suddenly remembers she has siren telepathy, which she has been using through-out the book, and reaches out to all of her friends at once. That gives her the strength to shake off the genie control. Then she executes the plan she made with the only female genie-keeper and her young son, who hasn’t yet grown into a swaggering jerk of a man. You see, the sexist male genie-keepers think they know everything and refused to work with a non-genie-keeper woman who doesn't know her place.
Various whaky secondary events are crammed in:
For all of its incoherance, the book respects the rule where we have to learn more about the world. We get professional magic-using hitmen. We learn demons can appear without being summoned if they time it exactly when a ghost dies, since that makes a tunnel from here to the otherworld. Genies are new to the series, and we learn genie-keeper powers come from being part genie. If you use mental telepathy in an airport, we learn the TSA has magic to spy on it. Then we get a teaser: her mom is not just a siren, but a siren queen, and she's been summoned for important sea-princess business in book 8.
Aug 2017
Deadworld is another series(?) that looks like an Urban Fantasy Detective Romance, but is clearly just a Romance, borrowing from the UFDR genre. I like it since it so clearly shows that however much you borrow, you have to decide whether you’re a Romance or not, and there’s a big difference.
The cover is a woman with leather pants and a halter top posing with a gun in an alley. No hot men, but I’m sure the next printing will add one. So that wasn't a clue. But the acknowledgement to the local RWA (Romance Writers of America), that was a big clue. Always read the fine print.
The borrowed elements are checked off pretty quickly: the main character works for the FBI with a semi-psychic partner on X-Files type cases. She has serious personal problems making her incapable of having a stable relationship wih a man. The secret supernatural stuff is as follows:
The villian is a vampire, sort of. These vampires don’t have fangs -- they get the blood out through mundane means. They can teleport at will, and the mind-control is jacked-up to be instant and irresistable (but don’t worry -- he forgets to use it during the big fight scene). They also have no weakness to sunlight, holy ground, stakes to the heart and so on. And they actually get more energy feeding on ghosts. But sure, they’re vampires and not the necromancers which they clearly are.
The male lead is a good vampire who only drinks artificial blood. Real blood is pretty easy to get, but whatever. He was also a sheriff in the old West. And a quirky private investigator with a sexy psychic assistant and bombshell vampire best friend. He’s also rich, owning the company that makes the fake blood. You'd think he sells it to all the other good vampires, but that would be overthinking things. He also owns a 5-star Italian restaurant and is an execellent cook himself. In short, he's totally awsome, brah. He's frequently and lovingly referred to as: cowboy vampire, sheriff, vampire PI, or vampire cowboy sheriff. That may have started a trend since a month after this came out, we get May 2011's: "The Zillionare vampire cowboy’s secret werewolf babies".
One way you can tell it's a Romance is the sheer amount of pointless small talk. When she questions the leading man as her murder suspect, we learn what kind of coffee they all drink, who brings it, how good they thought it was and what types of pastry they all like. The millionare cowboy vampire likes "very strong" coffee. That sounds cooler than saying he likes French Press, which is how you’d actually order it. The FBI women like their coffee the same way they did in the previous two scenes. Later on, she accepts tea (from the FBI psychologist who warns she can’t outrun her personal demons, but allows her to stay on the case.)After the questioning, we get more small talk with her partner about how hot the guy was, how hot his assistant was (the main character’s now lesbian assistant psychic partner gets to have sex once after coming out and before being killed). But it’s fine, since dead psychics always come back as helpful ghosts. This sounds like the origin story of "FBI agent with ghost partner," but I assume the author’s dog ate those pages, because we get nada.
It's a pretty typical romance: lonely, incomplete heroine meets mysterious man; is suspicious at first, but slowly sees how studly he is and comes to rely on him. She's tricked into spilling her deepest secrets (as he shows her how powerful vampire hynotism is,) but he accepts and appreciates her flaws. He has to put her to bed and fantasizes about taking advantage, but doesn't. Then her love helps him overcome his greatest weakness: thinking he can't beat the bad guy. Yes, her role in killing the bad guy is only to inspire her man. Evil vampire even dies off-camera, his purpose accomplished.
My favorite part is when they meet the ghost of his dead wife. She gives him permission to move on to a new woman, and adds that she and the other ghosts approve of his new girlfriend, then disolves into spirit power.
Ah, let me explain. The final showdown has the bad guy with the trapped ghosts of his victims, drinking them as needed for power (but he’s a vampire, not a necromancer, dammit.) He very, very slowly calls one ghost at a time to suck from (vampire mind-control works on ghosts?) while the good guys watch (it’s rude to attack people before they’re fully powered-up). Then the ghost best friend and the cowboy PI’s ghost best friend (who isn’t dead, but we’re long past asking questions like that) help him to accept the help of all the remaining ghosts who believe in him, saving the day.
As far as an UFDR, this fails in a lot of ways. No one cares about the secret history of these vampires (in fact, the teaser for the next book drop them. It involves an opiate-addicted cop possessed by some new type of vengeful ghost). The book teases "how would an ancient vampire survive in a modern world," but then just drops it. Our evil vampire is rich and has an evil chauffer, but that’s all we get. There's a rule that ghosts can’t affect the physical world -- unless the plot requires it.
The heroine doesn't drive the plot, she's just in danger a lot. She doesn’t grow except to realize she can love the good sheriff vampire. There are no subplots involving consoling her best friend who got dumped that also affect the main plot. There's no approaching problems the way a woman would, with empathy and then sudden rage at being treated like a helpless chikita. The plot is just them reacting to evil guy. Vampire PI has been locked in a recurring struggle with him for 100+ years, but just dribbles that out during a chase scene. This is all fine for a Romance -- the plot is supposed to be bland and generic enough so you can focus on their burgeoning desire.
The spine says "Kensington Urban Fantasy." Wikipedia says Kensington also has a Romance line, where this book should have been, and doesn't mention the Urban Fantasy one. Kensington's web site doesn't mention lines at all. Even so, someone is probably getting fired over this mix-up. I feel bad, but if an editor couldn't tell this was a Romance, maybe they should change jobs.
May 2018
The first thing I noticed after reading the first book in the "Black Wings" series is how the main character has no friends. Her gay BFF co-worker is quickly killed, and then she just collects men fighting for her affections. I feel like this is the genre "innocent country girl comes to the intrigue-filled court and learns quickly". She's even a virgin, and her main hobby is sharing junk food at home with her talking basically-a-cat mini-gargoyle.
Secret world premise #1 is her job, which is meeting people when they die and escorting them to the afterlife portal. You just have to fly where the office tells you using your free pair of black wings which also turn you invisible. You may recognize this from the 2003 TV show "Dead Like Me". I was excited -- the TV show had fun deaths and life-lessons from the departed. But this has 2 routine deaths and then drops the idea. Drops it hard -- everyone in the office is killed by the bad guy. Secret world premise #2 is "royal court intrigue, but with demons". All of the fallen angels from millennia-ago have courts, and ancient feuds and complicated bloodlines. It's revealed our heroine is 1/2 demon on one side, while her human side is the only living great-great-great offspring of the demon king. Like I said: this is Princess Diaries, but they're demons.
The baddie in this book is a mindless thug demon. We never find out much about his deal. Early on he dismembers her BFF to make a point. Dialogue is roughly: "his soul didn’t taste as good as your mother's when I killed her many years ago, but better than the other souls of people I routinely kill". So I guess her mom is dead. But at least she has a sometimes-friendly witch contact ... no, never mind, that one is murdered by the long-lost demon father to make some vague point.
Romance-wise, her boss is a total jerk -- because he's in love with her! He turns out to be a contender as a wizard with a mysterious non-human parent. Her main love interest is a half-angel/half-demon sent to protect her. As usual, he tricks her about who he is, she's angry then forgives him, he spies on her with magic, and she's angry then forgives him. Sadly, he's so low-status in the demon world that their love is forbidden. Her demon father forces a foppish arrogant husband on her, but clever thinking puts off the marriage for a year. We also meet her new demon 1/2-brother, and her great-great ... grandfather on her mother's side? To sum up: 6 dudes are fighting over her.
The plot with the brutal demon is poorly explained and pointless, which is typical for a romance. He's explained near the end in a vision -- he's the lover of a manipulative evil angel with some sort of grudge. The prose is actually good, and gives us the only sex scene. In the showdown, our heroine casually incinerates crude demon. Somehow, she's learned "blue flame blast" (and we're told also "white sunforce blast", and a third blast with unknown color). After killing him she monologues, he comes back to life and rips her heart out, but it turns out she can regenerate, but it doesn't work on hearts, but it turns out she doesn't need a heart after all. I'm not making this up. After she comes back alive and kills the bad guy for real, her 6 lovers and fathers walk in and say how much they all really want her now. THE END.
I saw the author "Tina" Henry at a SciFi convention. Seemed very nice. Said she was upset this series was dropped by the publisher, but was onto a new series with a different take on Alice in Wonderland. As I bought this one I got a free copy of her new book, "The Mermaid". It was great! Not even great for a romance book or a cheesy urban fantasy -- legitimately a book I'd recommend to a general audience. Up in 2025, she's written three(?) "Alice" books and more 1-offs and seems to be getting positive reviews on most.
Oct 2018
As we all know, movies follow this sequence: 1) excellent foreign film, 2) not-as-good American remake, 3) completely unwatchable franchise that rakes in the cash. Book-wise, I used to think the '70's book "Interview with the Vampire" started off urban fantasy, but then I read 1987's "War for the Oaks". It's the Excellent Foreign Film of Urban Fantasy String Female Protagonist that no one's heard of.
One of the first things you notice is how gradually, through actions, we find out who's who. It takes a few chapters to figure out which bandmate is her best friend. In fact, it takes those chapters for them to realize it themselves. We're not quite sure about her loser boyfriend, then he becomes a bad-guy, then we realize we had the clues all along to know why, and that he wasn't really the bad guy. That's 1000% of the character development you get in the dumbed-down successors.
The secret world is the Fairie court and nothing else -- good elves vs. evil fairies for the fate of Minneapolis. We get short scenes where the 2 queens size her up -- this is what later authors realized they could stretch into long, predictable hissing contests. But most of the book deals with forming a new band, writing songs, getting naked with the new cute lead guitarist, and practicing. I've heard the author, Emma Bull, play "Girl Needs a Knife" with her real-life band (reformed for 1-night-only at a SciFi con). It's quite good. She's writing what she knows.
It turns out the main character leading a band is the actual point. A faction of fairies is ready for a new way and they picked a human as a cat's paw -- setting her up as the leader of the new ideas. At least one fairy joins her band since he's curious what life is like for people who aren't knights in the fairy court.
Her eventual love interest is the cruel fairy who scouted her as a semi-disposable symbol. He trusts her with secrets, but only as part of his plan. Then he comes to admire her more and more as a unique person, while she begins to understand the personal risks he's taken to find a "new elf way". An even cuter but less complicated fairy knight is starting to see her as a legitimate leader before he bravely dies. Several extended sex scenes ensue.
The books ends in a set-piece -- a battle of the bands between good and evil. Seems silly but it only happens because she proved her resolve to the Queen, knew enough to manipulate the evil queen into accepting, gained the trust of the "good" elves in her band, figured out a winner-takes-all challenge could be done at all, and gained the courage to actually do it.
All of the parts for later authors to exploit are there: romance and courtship with two guys, being thrust into the secret world, and solving problems by making friends. Any potential author who reads it would think two perfect halves of a thought: 1) I can't write that well, but 2) I don't need to -- people will probably read a series with more action, more magic critters, and more flirty banter, which I can do.
Nov 2018
Heroine Complex, by Sarah Kuhn, is about an Asian female superhero team. But mostly about one member who fits the UFDR mold. So it's different, but also the same.
Way back in Book One (this is Book Three) a demon army invaded earth. They're like demons from the old TV show "Charmed" -- the important ones have unique magic powers. The invasion was stopped and demon powers were flung into nearby humans. That's how the book's superhero team got their powers. Our main character got telepathy and weak mind-control. The invasion portals are now being watched, with rogue minor demons hunted down as they skip through. This book involves a new demon trying to sneakily invade.
Besides her powers, the main character is just a human 20-something. She has the self-control and attention span of a 6-year-old, driven by the insecurity of being the baby of the group. She's also manic - every faint idea of hers spirals out into poster-boards, vague plans, imagining the universal acclaim she will receive; then is forgotten an hour later for the next new idea. It's tactful, not for laughs.
True to the genre, she's devoted to her many friends. She has a meaningful conversation/cry with her older sister, makes up with an old frenemy, comes to respect a formerly aloof female friend, and after many, many attempts, finds out why she can't romantically set up her boss with anyone. That boss also has a small ugly dog named Pancake -- baby-sitting it will become an important plot point.
Romance-wise there's only one guy. She couldn't possibly consider anyone else. There's a full page where she fantasizes about him in the shower. Then we get two lengthy sex scenes detailing exact tongue and hand placement to bring her to ecstasy. I miss the old days where a vampire's teeth sent waves of full-body tingling and we could move on.<
The atmosphere is very 3rd-generation. The super-hero team has a fan-site. The biggest demon portal is in a couples-friendly sex shop. The demon traps are explicitly based on the movie GhostBusters. The fights have time-outs for the heroes to argue about fashion -- the bad guys wait. The main character works in an independent bookstore specializing in paranormal romance series (made-up ones). The main character's favorite is an out-of-print dragon romance series; the store's biggest seller is a 9-book series about slutty were-porcupines, loved for the sex scenes.
The main plot happens too fast for us to reflect on. They're investigating too many leads without enough people, accidentally landing in fights, going back over old evidence they forgot about while having shower sex, and in general being hit with bad-guy stuff faster than they can react. I think they defeat the bad guy. He was attempting to steal back all of the loose demon powers for himself, maybe?
Hopefully you like the characters and are distracted enough by everyone's personal growth. The book ends with the main character realizing she's been working too hard to impress other people, and has also been avoiding responsibility. She decides to take more of a leadership role doing what we've known all along was her true passion. Aww. Unless there are more demons? No? Then Aww.
March 2019
Mercy Blade, by Faith Hunter, is the 3rd book in her longer "Jane YellowRock" series (her other series is "Rogue Mage"). This book is a mess, like it was written by a hastily trained AI. Before making fun of it, the interesting parts:
The heroine, Jane, is a were-cat, but only sort of. She's possessed by the spirit of a were-puma(*), which allows her to change into a puma(*) plus any animal she's collected bones for, and may eventually turn her evil. Potentially more fun, the cat-spirit talks to her (in pidgin English). I say potentially since all it says in this book are things like "wolves bad". But it moves the plot along, once, by yelling "mine" at the sight of her possibly-ex-boyfriend with another woman.
In this world vampires go insane for a decade after first being created, and frequently there-after. And so since ancient Babylon, vampires have existed in symbioses with a rare shape-changing reptile who can cure their madness. These creatures also mercy-kill young vampires who never regain their wits. This is the "Mercy Blade" from the title.
The general public knows about vampires and, in this book, to great shock, were-cats reveal themselves to the public. We find out that most were-creatures breed true, but werewolves don't. They're the lowest of the low, and can only grow the pack by biting humans. Other were-creatures ban this. To enforce it, they keep trained Scottish swampmen with super-speed and razor claws whose only job is to murder were-creatures who bite humans for fun.
(*)The book calls her "skin walker" spirit a mountain lion. But it's set in New Orleans (which we learn is 90% bars and brothels, and no longer serves cajun food). The thing is, Mountain Lion is more of a Western states term. In the South the animal called a panther. I feel like puma is the most universal name, so I'm using that (over the close second, cougar). But I digress.
The book has romance elements, but odd ones. We start with her and her boyfriend naked in bed, waking up. She drools over his abs and worries that she hasn't told him her dark cat secret. You see, in the last book, she rescued him while in were-cougar form. He has partial amnesia but it's only a matter of time before he figures it out. He's an elite human cop you see. We don't see him for the rest of the book.
Next she meets a slim, sexy swordsman who saves her after he tricked her vampire boss into sending her to meet him at a werewolf bar (did I mention the plot makes no sense)? All of the werewolf clawing requires them to partly undress each other, tending to wounds. Sexy swordsman has powerful love magic, which she resists, but he's still very mysterious and cute. In later chapters he's dropped as a love interest. I think the author forgot about it. He's now a good-guy who we think is a bad-guy until the last minute, since he acts suspicious for no reason.
We next turn to her boss's bodyguard, who Jane had a fling with before dating the cop. He begs her to let him hide out at her place, then makes sex jokes until she agrees to slow-dance with him, which gets her all hot. Then in a later chapter he sneaks into the shower with her and she likes it (it's even more gross and rapey than I make it sound).
All through the book, she worries about her missing man (the elite detective in her bed). He's been seen with a hot redhead, and isn't returning calls, but he's probably on an undercover seduction mission with the sexy werecat lady, or the werewolf lady, or both (it's both). Jane can't decide whether to wait, or to cheat on him (this is where her puma-spirit yells "mine", letting us know she still wants him).
There's a disturbing amount of, well, I'll let you decide: after most fights she's described as bloody, dirty and stinky. She has to strip down and hose-off the gross sweat and dried blood, new blood; some hers, some not; out of all the crevices of her body. The shower scene actually happened when they both needed to clean off lots of blood at the same time. Later, her boyfriend was being turned into a werewolf. It involves biting, frequent sweaty sex with the she-wolf, and being kept covered in she-wolf sweat and saliva in-between. So, that, uh, stuff, is part of a real-life sex fetish, I assume?
Unlike a real UFDR, she doesn't have female friends, or any friends, and very little inner life. Her best friend is her female roommate who's out-of-town for the entire book (we get one brief phone call near the end). Sub-letting is a friend of her friend, a visiting witch who Jane dislikes and hasn't talked to. The only two other women are the werecat and "werebitch", who both rape her boyfriend, are otherwise huge sluts, and die horribly (by the Scottish lizard, and by Jane). Jane's closest relationship is with her on-call all-male ultra-competent merc squad. Altogether, the book feels like more of a male sex-fantasy of the "I'd let her dominate me" type.
The writing is awkward. My favorite passage, paraphrased, is "I loaded the Benelli M4 shotgun with seven 2.5 inch standard rounds". Did we need to know how many, how big and what type? This is part of the long description of weaponing up, including the many stabby hairpins she wears in her waist-length hair. She's endlessly taking them out and putting them back in as she's searched, or goes out dancing. She never even uses them. Later on she's chatting with her former lover about security (she works for the vampire who runs the city. Yawn) -- it's a full page of techo-babble about cameras. I don't want to tell the author her job, but consider: "I told him about how security cameras have changed in the last 10 years, and he was so impressed he kept looking up to my eyes before going back down to my breasts. I felt his hot breath on my neck as I described sliding in thick fiber optic cable". See how that tells us what we need to know without putting us to sleep?
Rounding out this whole mess is the plot. The werecats of Africa are in town for a public high-level alliance with the vampires of New Orleans, to ensure their safety. Map check: New Orleans is in America, near Florida, which is nowhere near Africa. An alliance is pointless. Sexy elf swordman is the anti-insane-vampire creature, but was thrown out 50 years ago after an argument so bad they forgot he was vital to vampire ecology. As were the werewolves, somehow. In unrelated news, the werewolves have proof the head vampire committed murder and are pursuing legal remedies, but get bored and hire wizards to help them attack vampire HQ instead. Finally, the head vampire's 2nd bodyguard has also been killing people and planting evidence to frame the sexy head bodyguard. Jane sums it up herself at the end: "there were so many plots no one could have figured it out".
Did I mention she's multi-cultural? Well, she is. Her last name, YellowRock, is a family name, not just made up by flower-children. That is all. My biggest beef is she works for a basic city-running soulless evil vampire. You tolerate those guys, and work with them against something worse. You're not suppose to work for the evil monster in these books. My ultimate beef is the deux ex machina of scent. At first her puma form can smell some clues. Then she turns into a bloodhound to really track one particular scent. Then she can smell werewolves in a moving car from 1/2 a mile away, and from the scent of her boyfriend's day-old blood she can tell he's not dead. The last few chapters -- she just smells everywhere she needs to be. Which is fine, since anyone who has a problem with that has quit reading long before now.
June 2019
The best part of The Black Parade, by Kyoko M, are the heroine's feelings for her ex-boyfriend. He's a Mr. Right who treats her well and wants a family. But she's terminally poor since her supernatural job pays nothing; and is an orphan -- worse, her mom died in an asylum; and she drinks too much. He'll eventually realize she's not good enough. It's sad when we find out that she's the one who broke it off. The second best part is the bizarre selection of men fighting for her love: the ex-BF comes back and still wants her; she saved an Angel's life who's falling in love with her; and an evil demon who originally needed to human-sacrifice her, is now sending sex dreams to convince her to be his slutty eternal queen. Third best part: her platonic angel friend watches her put on a slinky black dress to go on a second date with Mr. Right. On the way she's cut-up all over by a monster, forcing her to cancel the date and go back to the Angel. He's forced to magically heal her by kissing and licking her entire body, during which time they realize they love each other.
So, obviously, the book is totally a paranormal romance. A later one in the series even has a cover from the "bare-chested faceless man" stock photo collection. If you care about a plot, or anything unique, skip this series. But it's somewhat interesting since it seemed to start as a real book.
The jacket tells us she needs to help 100 ghosts find peace in two years, or she'll be sent to hell. No. She has 2 days left to save the final 3 ghosts. Even so, that could be fun - a tense 3 days. We see her scrambling to work at the diner, the manager with a soft spot for oddballs like her, and her best waitress friend who knows not to pry and is mid-divorce anyway. But it turns out ghosts are easy to save, as long as you're ready at all timees, work quickly and are a good listener. She meets an oddball ghost who gets more and more mysterious ... then we toss all that away. It's like someone else took over 1/3rd of the way through. The plot is now incompetent demons chasing her and her new angel bodyguard, as they "banter".
I'm going to say that the author isn't trying for a genre -- she's just writing what she feels like, which is an urban fantasy for a few chapters, then a romance where the action jumps around much more than usual. At the end of the book, after being only about her and her magically buff angel lover, the heroine goes to ex-boyfriend Mr. Right's funeral. His mom never liked her, but his sister was always really nice. They catch up before the service, and make plans to stay in touch. That feels like neither genre, but it's kind of fun.
July 2021
"The Ghoul Vendetta" is the 4th book in the 2013 "SPI files" series. It features a female agent in a global, government sanctioned monster-hunting agency. She's human (booo!) but is an ultra-rare "seer" who can ignore illusions and in general detect magic (which we're told is a big deal in this world since all badguys have easy access to illusion spells). Does she go rogue after not being allowed on the big cases since she's a woman? Nope. Is she about to be fired for making friends with the not-so-bad members of the bad guys? Also, no. She's pretty much a team player contributing to the overall sucess in her own small way. Huh.
But what about her boyfriend? Well, he's a sexy David Bowie-style dark-mage goblin. At the start they're on what may be a date. Before one fight they kiss for the first time. Then again for the first time before the big battle. Then a wise all-knowing ghost tells her boyfriend "you have already chosen this world over your own because of your love for this woman". That would be pretty hot if anything led up to it. We're told he's a big shot in his world, but don't really see it. We also can't see why he loves her -- she seems to be just doing her job. Her over-protective alpha-male ex-special-forces partner (who has a steady GF) and her goblin lover face-off -- very hot in a "you may have fooled her but you'll have to do better to get my aproval" way -- but then he's kidnapped. The big romantic moment is when the SPI beauracracy decides goblin mage-lord is worthy of a Visitor's pass since he seems to really love her. Be still my heart.
The plot doesn't gel. Some bad guys have been stealing random artifacts to drain later as magic-power-batteries. Some of them are the bones of ancient vampires, which apparently all vampire families secretly keep as their most precious treasures. The opening scene has the bad guys kidnapping a very well-protected vampire child who is quickly killed, but also slowly tortured for info on where the bones are (which we later find out he wasn't trusted with). We meet a vampire head-of-household, but then the vampire angle fizzles out -- the bones aren't really sacred, just generic "power" for some ritual. At the end the good guys just return them.
We get a tour of SPI's CSI-like many high-tech labs with quirky specialists, where they discover the bad guys were only disguised as teleporting ghouls ("ah yes, ghouls are well-known teleporters", no one said) but are really disguised evil sea-monsters trying to break the ancient curse which banished them. They don't seem very banished to me. The main character helps figure this out, and at the end saves the day with a rash action, but otherwise we pretty much just watch a government agency functioning, albeit from her point-of-view.
We never get much of a feel for the bad guy. He seems to delight in taunting her partner. We find out the bad guy ate her partner's ex-partner 5 years ago, right in front of him. The big baddie even gives them what turns out to be a super-magic spear artifact enchancted to kill badguys and attuned to her partner which awakens his racial memories of being a descendant of one of the good guys who originally banished them. You'd think that means big baddie needed him to "awaken" for some spell to work -- nope. He merely thinks giving your enemies a priceless artifact is a way to really make them angry. The big battle has dragons out of nowhere which don't really do much, and is saved by ghosts of the ancient good-guys, riding in Lord of the Rings style.
I'm at a loss. The series isn't about a woman doing things her way in a man's world. It's not about a single woman able to hunt monsters and have a full life on her terms, including romance. It's not even close to a Romance novel -- it has less of that than most non-Romances. The secret world part is bland -- werewolves and vampires and generic magic (the bad guys here are the Irish "Fomorians". Nice, but been done before). This series is if CSI-Miami had a magical spin-off told from the perspective of a junior female investigator. Which is apparently a thing people want.
Aug 2021
Amazingly, this one is almost literary. First the details. "Iron Kissed" is the third book in the "Mercy Thompson" series, by Patricia Briggs. The cover is off-putting: a woman bent over with low-cut jeans, high-cut top, and lower back tatoo. The other covers in the series highlight her breasts. I'm not sure if that means anything -- about this book, or about me.
The secret world is a bit blah, but also new. We've got mostly peaceful werewolves, dark fairies and a few vampires, plus a reference to a sorcerer in a previous book. They've been public knowledge for a medium amount of time -- pro-human/anti-monster groups are forming, laws are about to be passed, fairies have been put on a reservation, and so on. The supernatural creatures would probably be on the losing end of an all-out war, so they tread lightly.
Our heroine is a unique coyote-shifter. She's not a werecreature, but she was raised by them. Due to her mysterious native American ancestry she can turn into a coyote at will (she's naked when she turns back. She's naked a lot in this book, but not in a sexy way). Her coyote powers are: good at hiding, and having a fabulous sense of smell for tracking and such. Oddly for this sort of book, she isn't insecure about her looks. Men seem to fall for her, but we never get a description and she has no internal monologue, looks-wise. She's also the first female urban fantasy detective who can keep from mouthing off to every single authority figure she meets, which is refreshing.
The Romance element is ultra-traditional and a bit boring (but I'm not complaining). Two werewolves love her -- one is funny, musical and picked her out as a good breeder when she was 14. The other is an aggressive pack-leader and terrific kisser who believes in sex only after marriage. We're told she must choose in this book, or things will explode. So far, so good. But then she figures out that the first guy has lost interest in her. Over a few scenes where it's established she can keep her independence, she decides to be the Alpha female of the pack with good-kisser #2. It ends with her in coyote form in the lap of her new sexy werewolf husband, petting her lovingly (hey, I warned you it was boring)
The subplots are nice. The werewolf's daughter was beaten up by some angry humans and our heroine has to calm down the testosterone-raging dad, support the daughter emotionally, and resolve it without bloodshed. Near the end, a guy seems to commit suicide, but it was actually mind-control magic. She nicely decides to let the brother know the true story, for closure and stuff, even though he's one of the guys who beat up the daughter. We also learn the names and a little history of every werewolf in their small pack. And of course, we get a summary of the last book -- she killed some mega-enchanced vampires or something.
The main plot works in a low-key way. She's brought in only to smell around some murder scenes. She smells-out the killer, her father figure goes to confront him, but the guy, a human, has just been murdered. The fairies want to cover it all up by letting her father-figure take the fall. Even he wants to, but she's just too darn stubborn. After hearing her first lover play a great set at a big music festival and hearing everyone say how great he is and how any women he loved would be soooo lucky, she uses her coyote powers to sneak into the dead guy's house and get a good sniff around, but no dice. More super-powerful people tell her she really has to stop, but she's too stubborn. A bad guy chases her and she leads it to the werewolves' house, then she helps fight it off. Then she's following up on either a subplot or possibly a new love interest when, wham, it's the killer! I can't decide if that was a clever misdirect, or sloppy writing. Her big effort here is that even though he's mind-controlling her, she tricks him into going somewhere her werewolf pack will be. Then kills him anyway by tricking him some more. The big finale is getting the ultra-powerful creatures to compromise so everyone's happy. Basically, she solves the case in proper UFDR fashion: by being stubborn and using her head and communication skills.
A sweet part: the bad guy mind-controls her into wanting to bang him. We're vague about how far they get, but then afterwards we learn he's definitely raped her. Then someone gives her new boyfriend a long explanation of people's reactions to rape and how the boyfriend can best support her. You don't read that every day.
All together, the urban fantasy part is a bit bland. But there's 12 books in the series and there are lots of loose ends in this one to use later. The character is a bit boring. Sure, she has 2 gay best friends, but they aren't in it much. She also owns an auto-repair business but it seems tacked-on (but made the cover: her tatooed butt is bent over a car she's fixing). It's missing the schlokiness of similar books: we don't get pages of pointless banter, deranged arguments with anyone not completely cooperating, or long descriptions of what she and her unique pet do to relax (she doesn't even have a pet). Her motivations and the ways the story moves actually make sense. I'm even curious how she'll relate to the werewolf pack in her new role. This series seems very readable.
April 2022
"Curse on the Land" by Faith Hunter is the second book in her "SoulWood" series. It's bad, but in an interesting way. I rate it "readable".
The main character fits the genre in an original way. She's a former child-bride in a polygamous cult -- naive, meek, inexperienced, but gaining confidence and trying to make her place in the world. This naturally gives her a large family of 1/2-siblings with problems. Nell needs to take time out as her younger sister needs guidance with her new magic powers, her sick father won't see a doctor, her mother frets about her well-being, and an evil tree is taking over the church grounds. Side-bar: I highly recommend the non-fiction book "Escape", by Carolyn Jessup, about growing up in a polygamous cult.
Sadly, she's not a 1/2-vampire or 1/2-anything. But she's a new weird thing, so it's fine. She can interact with the woods around her house (named "SoulWood") to sense everything for miles (yes, Harry Dresden did this 5 years earlier on his Island). Almost immediately we find her powers work on any old patch of land, but SoulWood is still special since she needs to feed it blood and human lives!?! (which she doesn't do in this book, but did in the first one, but he was evil). Oh, she's also immune to most magic, since Earth Power, and she senses she could tell the ground to suck in and devour people. In practice all she does is sense the ground and mostly says "yup, this land also has a curse on it".
Romance-wise there's not much, but it's fine. Nell was scarred by her underaged forced-marriage and is surprised when people think of her as sexual. She has a girlish crush on her werecat partner because he's around a lot and is nice to her. Good enough.
The required "banter" with her friends is surreal. It's trite, way-too-personal, way too much, and her male were-creature friends hang out at her house shirtless too much. A few of them even turn into werecats in her driveway and when she gets home unexpectedly they almost murder her. So funny! Her boss pulls her off the case to take her on a date. Hilarious! Wait, her boss? Yeah, her "friends" are really her co-workers in an elite government X-Files division. So I can add "disturbingly inappropriate" to criticism of the banter, even if it accurately captures the sexual harassment at the real Department of Homeland Security.
But another plus, she's suitably impetuous: in chapter one she almost dies after using her ground powers to go deep and check out an unknown powerful thing. That happens again at a crime scene. The third time she's learned her lesson, quickly gets a helpful read ... and then goes too deep and is almost killed by an unknown powerful thing. She ignores her boss's orders, but mostly since the whole team is ignored until we need them for the plot.
Yet one more plus, she solves the evil tree problem by just talking to it. Very genre-appropriate. Except this tree saved her life (in the first book, which we're told over and over) and her first plan was to completely murder it, and she only tried talking after that hilariously failed. If you were wondering, the tree was acting evil because it was bored.
Now onto the funny parts. Her main job is to take readings with a super state-of-the-art magic detector. It has multiple dials for vampires, werecreatures, ummm, Frankensteins? The author gives a really nice explanation of calibrating to ambient levels so that we always get a reasonable result. We never do -- every reading "redlines" past the top. Every one. I suppose the only thing cooler than a reading off the charts is being off the charts after being callibrated. We get one reading where one of the levels is a little shy of the top, but the next dozen reading are back to redlining. This is one of the few Urban Fantansy Detective Romances that had me laughing. Around chapter 4 we meet a top-level agent: young, beautiful, and so important and cool that she ignores all of the agency rules. Everyone says so, and speculates about what she is and what her powers are. Two paragraphs later we're just told she's a dragon. Mega-girl announces to everyone that she likes our heroine for being a rule-breaker. She drops by twice later to sign their paychecks or something, and announces to everyone that she likes our heroine for being a rule-breaker. Most boring dragon character ever. Late in the book a co-worker gains a new power after almost being killed -- the power of infodump to advance the plot. Just terrible, but I'm fine with it: the plot's been very slow, I don't have any confidence our heroine can solve it, so go ahead and just tell me.
This last funny part is hilariously remarked on in the book. After the plot is over she muses that she hasn't followed-up on any of her family's problems. Yes, we all noticed that and don't know why you're reminding us. Very little happens in this book.
Sexism is completely botched. Putting up with, mitigating, and getting around sexism is a big theme in a real Urban Fantasy Detective Romance. In this book, one guy makes one sexist remark and he's pounced on by everyone else. The heroine doesn't even have time to be offended before he's apologizing. That's just boring wish-fulfillment. She didn't have to overcome anything.
Finally, get ready -- this is a spin-off! Nell talks to the Jane YellowRock character, from that other series, twice over the phone in this book, since Jane saved her life in book one. A cross-over makes no sense. The Jane character is a generic bad-ass male-fantasy filth kinkster with no inner life to speak of. It's a different genre.
Oh, geez, the plot: a big dangerous spell got out-of-control, everyone who cast it is just silently waiting to die, but Nell convinces them to shut it down instead. I can't believe I forgot that!
Oct 2022
Series tend to go downhill. This was my thought after previously reading the third book in Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series. It was so bad, but also popular, that I figured if must be riding on just how terrfic the first one was, titled "SkinWalker". I'm here to tell you -- the series was never good (and was never an Urban Fantasy Detective Romance).
By the third book the main character was boringly overpowered. That can happen -- she could have "figured out her powers" in the first two. But no -- it turns out she's always been a heavily-armed expert martial artist with a plot-destroying sense of smell, fast regeneration, shape-change into any animal, and a BFF sorceress providing her with bleeding-edge magical gadgets. This first book hints at a time when she was trying to make it in the world, but only to emphasize how she's always been awsome and boringly OP.
But surely this first book gave her interesting motivations and unresolved angst (which were solved by book three). Not really. She can't remember her past and claims to be desperate to learn where she came from. That seems to have potential. But when she meets people who know about her she's all "hurry up with your boring story old man -- I need to kill this bad-guy for the reward". That's right -- her motivation is money. She spends more time worrying about getting the early completion bonus than trying to find out who her parents were.
But what about the weird cat spirit trapped in her body? In book 3 it's pretty much nothing, but it was a serious conflict in the first two, right? Again, nope. Midway we find out she doesn't need the cat spirit for anything -- all of her animal and smell powers come from her alone. The cat spirit is just comedic relief. There's some fake drama about it being a soul she stole, but then we learn that only happened because she absorbed the cat's body to heal herself after it sneak-attacked and mortally wounded her (wait -- she's always had the ability to do what?)
But maybe book one had a great plot before the author ran out of ideas. Once again, nope. The plot is she has to catch a bad guy, wanders around accidentally seeing him a few times; he runs but she easily smell-tracks him, then grossly out-guns him during the final fight. He appears to have a clue about her past which might make her hesitate -- oh, never mind, she slaughters him without a second thought.
Technically there's a complication where a secret wizard's guild is also hunting the badguy. But it's a page long -- we learn about them at the top of the page, and they're killed at the bottom. There's a sub-plot with illegally created wild vampires which seems beneath her since she's been slapping around the city's master vampires pretty easily. Wait -- they're her boring mission for the next book. But look out -- in solving this case she made an enemy of the city's master vampire (the guy she's been easily slapping around).
Two of my favorite out-of-place bits: she explains her good dancing by saying she took a class. Why do we need to know that? She can out-fight every man with no training, but I guess we need her dancing skills explained in the most out-of-character way. Bit number two starts with her pointlessly browsing stores. We already know she owns and wears custom sexy outfits fitted with special weapon holders, but for this scene only we pretend she's poor and has bad fashion sense. She's thrilled as a helpful shop girl picks out an inexpensive but nice-looking mix-and-match set of tops and skirts. Did pages from a different book fall into this one?
Onto what we really want to know -- what about the gross-out sex kink stuff from book three? Is that the major draw of the series? Oddly, no. She's nude or nearly nude in many scenes, but we get no lengthy descriptions of that particular kink -- no hosing mixtures of bodily fluids from her delicate areas and so on. I like to imagine the gross-out stuff is from fans. I think she wrote books 1 and 2 as regular sexy, then saw filth-based fan-fiction and at first though "oh my!", then thought some more, and decided to give her fans what they wanted in book three.
Oct 2022
Bad Girls Drink Blood (S.L. Choi) has some fun ideas and might be worth reading, but for the super icky love interest. He's yet another noble Prince-in-Exile, vastly older than her. He's been grooming her since she was 15 when he decided she was "a female worthy of him". She's shocked when she learns, but a chapter later decides that it's normal and actually very romantic.
If you can stand to continue, on to the secret world. It's fine. In this universe the supernatural stuff is public knowledge but they don't mix -- most magic critters live in fairyland, and humans get a thrill out of visiting non-human clubs. It's not the usual dark demons and vampires and weres. What we get are Sun fairies and Moon fairies (which are more like elves) and furballs who can sprout fangs and teeth but are still more cute than deadly. There isn't a Master Vampire in sight.Powers-wise, she's physically super strong, heals by drinking blood, and is weak in sunlight. So she's a 1/2-vampire, right? Well, no -- she's a defective artificial creation for The War called a "Blood Elf". That's new. We later meet some normal full Blood Elves and learn a little about why she's defective and not talked about in polite society.
Her personality does a great job of pushing what the genre wants. She's the muscle in the family detective agency, so thinks of herself as stupid, especially compared to her sisters. Back in fairyland she was put down by Sun Fairies and has clearly internalized it. She wants to hate them for being all stuck-up and elfy, except her adopted sister is a Sun Elf. She can't use magic and dislikes fairies who can, but her other ice-fairy adopted sister, whom she loves, is super-magical. Basically, she's a mess of insecurities and constantly second-guesses herself.
Back to the secret world and plot, we find out the war was between the Sun and Moon elves, the learn later it was just one Moon elf faction. We learn that the art of portal-creation was part of the war, possibly involving long-lost druids. We learn that fairy magic is channelled through foci, which all come from living crystals. We get some Moon Elf politics. It's fine.
But then come the story problems. Having met her True Prince so early, flirting with new guys is out of the equation. Next, the main bad guy is cartoonish -- pure evil, with evil spells, and a needless personal hatred towards our girl expressed through sexist insults. Then the last half of the book turns into pure action. As the danger escalates, our heroine simply turns into a killing machine, easily punching and smashing and slaying her way to the ending. We started with her and her two adopted sisters trying to keep the detective agency afloat, living in a makeshift house hidden near the human/fairy border, questioning whether she's good enough. By the end she's saved the world, is besties with the queen, has cathartically overcome the effects of childhood bullying, found her soulmate, and has gained an epic new power.
This book's other title is "Bad Fae Druid Book 1". What do we have for it? Her sister has a crush on that insufferable Sun Fairy royal guard, the main character just met her mysterious grandfather; I guess we could watch her much older prince love interest put his kingdom back in order? Or maybe it will be named: "Queen's Assassin: Conquest of DarkRealm"? Jumping ahead to 2025, yes: in book 2, from the reviews, her kick-ass self is sent by the queen on a mission vital to the safety of the kingdom. I'm out.
Dec 2022
Magic Burns by "Ilona Andrews" (a pair of writers) is surprisingly well-written. It starts out fast -- a phone call from a fellow mercenary wakes our herione from her lonely bed. He needs help on a tricky rush job. After agressively negotiating her cut, we jump ahead to where she's dodging fireballs as her friend sneaks up on the bad guy. And wouldn't you know it -- just as they conk him out, the city-wide magic flare-up -- which was probably making him so tough -- fades back down. Right away we know who she is and learn that magic flare-ups are going to be a problem. Next we get a slick info-dump: a bystander sees our hero's Order badge and says "my kid wants to join them, but how are they different from the Merc's Guild?" and she explains. Very nice. FYI, both guilds handle monster problems, but The Order has more of a Dead or Alive attitude. She works for both, so that might be fun.
Non-sucky writing continues through-out the book. There's a long description of a random cave -- it will be important later. Her werewolf and vampire friends argue during the walk to the park -- we learn something about how those groups interact in this world. This may be the only book of this type without a page of "banter" about who loves coffee more. But before more praise of the writing, let's get to the checklist:
A point agianst: she's single with no family or close friends. But during the book she adopts an orphan and gets close to a work friend, sharing their deep secrets and getting werewolf relationship advice. So she has and cares about family and friends. Good. Then more bad: she's comfortable with her appearance and is also pretty confident, possibly since she's a martial arts killing machine. I don't love that. But she has flaws: she's super horny, nearly leaping at every man she sees (a reverse spoiler -- turns out she's been celibate in the first book. This book 2).
Another point against: she's not a weird magical 1/2-thing, but she makes up for it with Dark Secrets! Who taught her deadly illegal magic? And why can she control the undead? Maybe together we'll find out she's not completely human.
The world's backstory is where it gets good. The magical world is public, mostly since decades of high-magic waves have wrecked parts of the city, messing-up tech during the peaks. Crossbows are the go-to weapon and transportation is either horses or dual gas&magic cars. Werewolves have sub-tribes for various species (were-hyenas) and the "alpha" is just a strong guy who's a decent politician. Witch covens fall into registered and unregistered. Vampires are two-part things: humans can be turned into mindless killing undead, known to us as vampires, but real vampires are this other race who stay at home while puppeting the mindless ex-human vampires around town. And Fomorians as bad guys! Every author uses them now. They're public domain "real" Irish monsters (they're in 1980's Dungeons&Dragons).
Hitting the genre straight on, she solves plenty of problems by merely talking. Her first case is all talk. Her ex-boyfriend wants to marry the werewolf leader's ex-girlfriend and they want her to get the leader's permission. After some brawling, she hears the leader's side, they mutually complain about ex's, and eventually he comes around. Just great. The book has a sexy, mysterious who's-side-is-he-on? guy. After the usual taunts and sexual tension she gets him to admit he's only groping her out of reflex. He actually likes simple farm girls, and is very lonely in general. She convinces him that doing a good deed for some sexy witches will help him with both things. Then we find out they were both on the same side in the main plot, but his macho lone-wolf attitude kept him from realizing. She's practically a monster therapist.
She even pretty much solves the main case by talking. She's the one able to meet with everyone and figure out the whole picture. Sure, she's randomly attacked and solves some problems by fighting, and after she's flung across the room by an ogre-swipe she somehow counters by cutting out its liver. But that's only to establish her street cred. The real solution is negotiation.
The writing and plotting is decent enough that one quibble stands out. Early on she's looking for a little girl's mother, which includes visiting her old house (a clean one, apparently proving she's a good mom). A chapter later a plot hole is filled by having the main character awkwardly explain how she left a note for the mom while she was there. Huh? As an author, you're allowed to go back to the old scene and show her leaving the note. It's not considered cheating.
All-in-all this is a solid book in the genre. It's got enough romance and relationships, and that strong "this is a job for a woman" vibe. My only worry is it may be a bit too well-written. Many readers of these books like two pages of the bad-guy calling her the C-word, then two more pages of him moaning "oh no! I can't believe a lowly woman is beating me!". This book skips that junk and the bad guy only calls her the B-word the minimum required number of times (twice).
Oct 2023
"Ebony Gate: The Pheonix Hoard, book 1" (Julia Vee & Ken Bebelle) is discordant. It's got the elements of a proper UFDR but it's too epic. Our hero Emiko thinks she wasn't good enough for her ex-boyfriend from a rich and powerful family, is a dissappointment to her family, and mid-book is worried about her normie business partners learning her magical secret. That would all be great, except she's from an even more rich-and-powerful family, she's a top-tier ninja-assassin exactly like her family wanted; and she has 19 hours and 34 minutes to save San Fransisco from total destruction. In short, she's written as down-trodden when she's anything but. It's discordant.
But first, let's see the UFDR parts. The secret world is "Big Trouble in Little China", but more secret. They kill or mind-wipe outsiders who find out, which is easy since many of them have a natural magic power, like toughness, or telekenisus, or air blades, but also the ability to make mind-affecting charms. It's got a bit of Harry Potter "there's a spell for everything" silliness, like when they need to repair a valuable magic item, Emiko remembers where some repair-o-mancers live. But overall the secret world is fine, and I'm curious what gets added in the next book. Oh, for more fun, they're all actually refugees from another dimension.
She's pathetic enough with sufficiently low self-esteem for this genre. She's not concerned about her looks, but she's very, very insecure about her lack of magical talent. Everyone in her family and her world has magic, except her. And her parents really are disappointed with her. While she was an excellent family ninja-assassin, she quit several years ago after an especially bloody public incident and has moved to SF to find herself. But of course her reputation has followed her and her only friends are her human business partners, her amulet supplier and her potion-maker. But over the course of the book she decides to stop being a recluse and meets everyone she's been avoiding. It's charming. It feels too easy, but maybe that's the point?
Her new romance is fine for this genre. He's super-rich, handsome, expert at her obscure form of judo (but she's better), and is sort of a jerk who won't stop crudely hitting on her. But ... he's a normie, not part of the magic world. That's a problem since he won't stop trying to research his ancestral magic sword. He's out of the picture about half-way through, put into the hospital while watching a secret magic battle, but after the climax is released with partial amnesia. On the last page they're seeing each other "as friends". Her studly ex-BF is also back in town now dating a powerful local woman who Emiko likes. That's an acceptable amount of low-key ill-fated romance.
We don't get any casual sexism. It actually goes the other way: anyone tough who matters is a woman. Emiko's mom is the world's most epic magical assassin (her dad stays home running the business), the leader of the friendly clan is an ultra-competent warrior woman (her brother is an inexperienced bumbler), and the bad guy is a man who can't even fight (he uses Mind Control). And of course, Emiko's reputation as a heartless killer precedes her. No one calls her little missy.
She's not a detective. She owns a small business locating and appraising artifacts with two human partners. That's like detecting, maybe? But we don't see her doing it, and she's rich anyway, and the main plot is her being chosen to save the city. We don't get any of the fun of her continuing her daily life as she solves the case.
On to the plot. It has some twists and turns, but a big amount is her somehow knowing where the bad guys will be, going there, kicking ass, then they barely get away. Or this conflict: only Shaolin-blessed swords can hurt demon-ghosts, so she figures a Shaolin monk might have some advice, if he'll even meet with her. One does and he just gives her a blessed sword. It's touching, since he explains how much good she's done for the city and is honered to help her, something she never thought of. But still, she solved a problem by getting a bigger sword.
This next thing is more epic-ness. In these sorts of books often the little people come to the hero with problems because they heard she was honest and fair and had a soft spot for helping people who couldn't pay a lot; sort of a self-appointed protector. This book cranks that to eleven as the city appoints her to the formal "Protector of the City" post. It even comes with magical powers (and fame, respect, and a parade). That's way too epic, but what really bugs me are the powers. The actual sentient soul of the city made her its protector, but the powers include earthquakes and roots bursting from the ground. Those are nature powers, right? Shouldn't city powers involve concrete and buildings and such?
There are some fun loose ends. The woman who runs the best restaurant in town still hates her and won't sell her pork rolls. Emiko is going to stay friends with a young girl from the bad-guy clan -- another ninja-assassin in training. Her younger brother has his traumatic Royal Rumble school graduation ceremony coming up. Her two business partners are starting to get curious about her past. Will she explain magic to her new possible boyfriend? All things which I'm sure will barely be touched-on as she fights a giant squid or something in book two.
June 2025
This is the nineteenth book in the Hollows series (the one where every title is a play off a Clint Eastwood movie). Nineteen. I can barely remember when I stopped reading it around book eight, because each was worse than the last. How did this go to nineteen books? To my surprise, this one was decent. The plot was fine and our heroine showed growth.
Let's get the negatives out of the way. Her two big enemies through the first half-dozen books are now her pals -- engaged to one, best friends with the other. We knew that was going to happen, but still seems like a negative. There's still too much banter, but it's tolerable. For example: she dallies with her sweet-heart for several pages too long, but that makes her arrive barely in time for The Thing, which let's the bad guys interfere, which provides the main hook (she and the chief bad-guy have to work together). Likewise they talk about pizza too much, and what kind of pizza they need to bring to someone as a bribe; but at least that reminds me of the old books -- the head vampire Piscary lived under Piscary's Pizza shop, and was Ivy's old boss, and humans are afraid of tomatoes.
The plot involves time travel, but it uses the good version: you shouldn't change things, but anything you do in the past is what really happened. In the present she knows a certain secret vault had a mysterious break-in sometime in the past 3-5 years, after which security was enhanced. In the past, she uses that knowledge to break in to the pre-enhanced vault. Of course, it turns out she was the mysterious breaker-inner all along. The book does a nice job balancing Rachel being careful to change nothing, but also deciding she can change things which won't affect known history, and her freaking out when someone else makes an unhistorical mess. The ending was somewhat predicatable, but it was fun seeing the pieces put together to where the happy ending happens by accident.
The other thing that impressed me was character growth. Her recklessness no longer completely drives the plot. At home, she's been tasked with helping the new head vampire learn the ropes. The Cincinnati supernaturals more-or-less trust her. She's now in the position of wishing other people were less reckless. What really impressed me was having her accidentally time-travel with a foil: young, powerful -- reckless -- witch. This new character gets to go off half-cocked while Rachel shows how mature she is. The author even pokes fun at herself by having the main character confess that she's not cured of being dangerously impulsive, she's merely figured out her triggers and how to avoid them.
I can't tell if this is a decent book, or decent for being the nineteenth in the series. What I do know is I won't be going back to any of the ten-plus I missed. I feel like this book caught me up just fine and everything in-between falls into either I don't need to know the details, or I don't want to knoow the details.