Hounded

And then there are the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. Wow. Harry Dresden done young and Irish and sexy. In Arizona. With a goofy name. Loved it all!

Seriously, I very much enjoyed Hounded, the first of the Iron Druid books. Atticus O'Sullivan is a compelling hero (and kind of a babe). The author's take on the Druid religion and its relationship to the earth was original and interesting. The first book in a series can be a little tricky to plot because you have to do so much world-building, but this one moves right along. And there's a really cool dog, who gets all the best lines. If I have a quibble, it might be that it stretched my imagination a bit when the third (or fourth?) really hot goddess threw herself at Our Hero, but maybe I was just a wee bit jealous. I would definitely recommend this book, and will be checking out the sequel from the library asap.

Last night I read Candace Proctor's Midnight Confessions. Ms. Proctor is also C.S. Harris, and I reviewed her book Where Shadows Dance a couple weeks ago. Midnight Confessions is billed as a romance, but it's also a mystery, and I just love Ms. Proctor's style. She's so smart, and it always feels like she gets the historical details right. I can easily recommend her work no matter what name she's writing under.

Where Shadows Dance

Where Shadows Dance by C. S. Harris is the 6th in a series of mysteries set in Regency England. Her website describes the main character, Sebastian St. Cyr, as a cross between Mr. Darcy and James Bond. I'll buy that. Sebastian is young, smart, and rich enough to stand by his own principles. Ms. Harris is a smart lady and Sebastian is an intriguing character, which makes these books a lot of fun to read.

The thing I've been thinking most about since reading Shadows Dance is how Ms. Harris has kept the series interesting through six (or seven, since she's got the next one nearly done) books. Each book has its mystery, but there are story lines that evolve across books that make the whole series richer. I've read series that get tired after this many books, but I don't think that's the case here. Shadows Dance was more romantic that the earlier books in the series, and while that smoothed out some of the more interesting character kinks that I'd gotten used to, it made for a satisfying resolution of one particular story line. While they exist in a very different world, these books remind me of Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series, both in the quality of the writing and the author's knowledge of time and place.

Discovery of the week was Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins. This book was published in 2010 and is says right on the cover "First in a new series". Sign me up. I loved the scope of Ms. Collins' imagination. The main character, Tate, is a trust fund baby from New York who wants to be taken seriously as an artist so she moves to Golgotham when she finds a place with cheap rent. Golgotham is the New York neighborhood where magic is the main currency. There are interesting ideas at work here about race and class and finding your place in the world, and if the plot is a little predictable, I was willing to forgive because it was so much fun reading a fresh take on the urban occult genre.

Speak Daggers To Her

So the theme for the week is witches. I've been taking a fabulous workshop titled Witchcraft for the Paranormal Author and run by Deborah Blake (www.deborahblakehps.com), and one of the first lessons gave us a bunch of different books with witch characters. As a result, I ended up with a bunch of witchy books on my hold list at the library.

The first one to come in was Speak Daggers To Her by Rosemary Edghill. It's a murder mystery published in '95. I thought the plot was just okay but the characterizations were very good, and the author's understanding of the occult/pagan/Wiccan community(ies) was incredibly nuanced. She got the politics right, or at least made a very convincing case for how people who call themselves witches operate in the real world. This is the first of three Bast mysteries (named after the main character), and I have one more from the library in the T.B.R. stack.

The other book I read this week that also had a witch as a main character was The Native Star by M.K. Hobson. This did not come off the workshop list, but is a book I picked up on our Portland/Powell's sojourn last month. It's set in a Steampunk alternative Wild West, and the main characters are a witch and a warlock. I thought the mystery was fairly compelling the plot moved along, but the romance was a little light for my tastes (Wow! They kissed! Twice!) and the whole thing was undercut by a final chapter where two of the minor characters sit down over tea and have a conversation that implies that the main characters are little cogs in a much bigger machine. Okay, I get that you want to set it up for a sequel, but don't disparage the satisfying conclusion you just reached. I guess if fate plops the sequel in my lap, I'll read it, but I don't know that I'll go out looking for it.