SOULJACKER

First in Galenorn’s (Blood Music, 2016, etc.) new urban fantasy series, featuring a succubus who runs a sex salon where a psychotic vampire has taken his first victim.

Lily O’Connell, a succubus, runs Lily Bound, a sex salon that caters to the dark fantasies of the fae, weres, and other paranormal creatures who populate Galenorn’s alternate Seattle. Galenorn blends the commonplace with the fantastic to depict a city built on an uneasy cooperation among races, constantly threatened by those, like vampires, who refuse to play by the rules. Lily Bound allows Lily to slake her constant thirst for energy via sex without harming anyone. But when she finds a client murdered by a vampire, she reaches out for help, which arrives in the form of human, witch, and were friends. They quickly realize the killer is none other than the Souljacker, a dangerous prison escapee intent on killing them all. Since Seattle police will not handle vampire cases, Lily turns to PI Archer Desmond for assistance. Archer is a chaos demon who falls fast for Lily’s glamouring charms. Although this is billed as a crossover urban fantasy/erotic paranormal romance, the sex scenes are perfunctory and few, and the romance between Archer and Lily is uninspired. Despite the intriguing premise of “an elite sex salon” and Lily’s assertions to the effect that “I’m proud of what I do. I give pleasure in a world full of pain,” she views her salon as an inferior alternative to the more traditional lifestyle she can never have.

A well-plotted introduction to an interesting paranormal version of Seattle that only needs well-developed protagonists with rich interior lives to suck readers in.