Hamilton abandons her Los Angeles Faerie Princess/private detective Meredith Gentry to return to her long-running St. Louis heroine, Anita Blake, who hunts rogue vampires, sleeps with a werewolf lover, and at times reanimates zombies (as last seen in Narcissus in Chains, 2001).
A licensed vampire executioner, Anita herself bears the mark of the wolf and has left a love union with ravishingly beautiful vampire Jean-Claude, her Master, and Micah, shape-shifting King of the St. Louis Leopard pack. As it happens, Anita’s union with these two lovers has had a synergistic effect in deepening her own powers and insight into the supernatural. She’s also mixed up with her ex-fiancé Richard, an Alpha werewolf, although the two have been apart for a month. All this is set slightly in the future, and Anita is a consultant both for the city and for federal agents bent on investigating preternatural crime. In an ironic scene, we watch her reanimate a corpse to determine whether its previous inhabitant died of a self-inflicted gunshot, a question that bears legally on his will and insurance. When Anita is visited by master vampire Asher, she finds she’s up against the European Council of Vampires, which has sent knockout gorgeous but dangerous Musette to check on Jean-Claude. Musette represents Belle Morte, the 600-year-old fountainhead of modern bloodsuckers, to whom Jean-Claude bears allegiance. Does Belle Morte want to move in on St. Louis? Asher warns that killing Musette—or, heaven forbid, Belle Morte—is simply not done. Anita is never logical about her love life, especially her ties with Richard, who dumped her because he longs to be human and she’s much too bloodthirsty and comfortable with monsters. The feds call Anita in when something un-human perpetrates a series of murders. As with the SM joint Narcissus, the new deaths turn on a fun center, Cerulean Sins, an erotic video store for vampires that leads us to father-abused child vampires Valentina and Bartolomé.
Sexy as a blue vein.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-425-18836-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
Categories: FANTASY
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A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY
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PERSPECTIVES
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.
12
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The celebrated author of Between the World and Me (2015) and We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) merges magic, adventure, and antebellum intrigue in his first novel.
In pre–Civil War Virginia, people who are white, whatever their degree of refinement, are considered “the Quality” while those who are black, whatever their degree of dignity, are regarded as “the Tasked.” Whether such euphemisms for slavery actually existed in the 19th century, they are evocatively deployed in this account of the Underground Railroad and one of its conductors: Hiram Walker, one of the Tasked who’s barely out of his teens when he’s recruited to help guide escapees from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. “Conduction” has more than one meaning for Hiram. It's also the name for a mysterious force that transports certain gifted individuals from one place to another by way of a blue light that lifts and carries them along or across bodies of water. Hiram knows he has this gift after it saves him from drowning in a carriage mishap that kills his master’s oafish son (who’s Hiram’s biological brother). Whatever the source of this power, it galvanizes Hiram to leave behind not only his chains, but also the two Tasked people he loves most: Thena, a truculent older woman who practically raised him as a surrogate mother, and Sophia, a vivacious young friend from childhood whose attempt to accompany Hiram on his escape is thwarted practically at the start when they’re caught and jailed by slave catchers. Hiram directly confronts the most pernicious abuses of slavery before he is once again conducted away from danger and into sanctuary with the Underground, whose members convey him to the freer, if funkier environs of Philadelphia, where he continues to test his power and prepare to return to Virginia to emancipate the women he left behind—and to confront the mysteries of his past. Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized. Coates’ narrative flourishes and magic-powered protagonist are reminiscent of his work on Marvel’s Black Panther superhero comic book, but even his most melodramatic effects are deepened by historical facts and contemporary urgency.
An almost-but-not-quite-great slavery novel.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-59059-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Categories: GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | HISTORICAL FICTION | FANTASY | HISTORICAL FANTASY
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