I’m not entirely sure why Eve was Marked. Since sinners are drafted to kill demons, her sin must be…rooting Reed in the stairwell after they just met, and maybe didn’t know each other’s names. I’m not quite clear on that, or maybe because she “tempted” both brothers. I must have forgotten this detail, or it wasn’t explained well enough, which is a problem when your protagonist is a “chosen one” – readers want to know why.

The series concept seems so obvious in hindsight, it’s actually a surprise that no one thought to do it before. The author’s angels and demons are well-crafted and original, as is the world-building. But then when witches and werewolves come into the picture…it seems a bit kitchen sink.

Review by Tez Miller

First published in April 2000, Storm Front is the first in Jim Butcher’s popular series – the Harry Dresden Files. This particular story introduces us to the wily wizard from Chicago by telling a story about a mysterious murder. Dresden’s investigation involves a dangerous mobster named Johnny Marcone, a deadly-yet-beautiful vampire named Bianca, and Chicago’s finest. Along the way, you find out more about this unlikely investigator and why he’s the guy with this shingle outside of his door:

Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses or Other Entertainment.

The setting is an area of post-Convergance Boston known as the Weird. Having lived in Cambridge and worked in Boston, I was hoping for more sights and sounds that I would recognize, but other than the lack of complaint about traffic, the Boston that del Franco creates feels real. (The most difficult parts of the novel to believe were the sections where Connor Gray and his police detective companion Murdock were driving without any substantial effort through sections of Boston that I remember being constantly backed up.) It’s changed, mostly due to the growing population of Fae: fairies, druids, elves, and dwarves, who have bought high rises, businesses, and other city assets. (Maybe they’re one of the factors in the lack of obnoxious traffic!)

The protagonists in this tale are the drow mercenary Jarlaxle and the assassin Artemis Enteri; characters whom were originally a part of the tales of the drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden and Company. These characters were apparently popular enough to have a spinoff series starting with Servant of the Shard.

This spinoff series The Sellswords started with Jarlaxle and Enteri and their attempt to establish themselves in the surface world using The Crystal Shard: Crenshinibon, an intelligent artifact that plays upon it’s bearer’s own desires for power. I say “their” attempt but really it’s about Jarlaxle; Artemis Enteri is largely a pawn, caught in a delicate but deadly web of deception amongst the drow of Bregan D’aerthe.

Review by Jeff Preston

At fifteen, Chloe Saunders still hasn’t menstruated. But the day it hits coincides with the ghost of a custodian haunting Chloe at school, until she finally breaks down. Told she has schizophrenia, she’s sent to live in a group home for other teens dealing with mental illness. Or are they?

But Lyle House’s patients are here by no happy accident, judging by the supernatural happenings. As Chloe comes to terms with her necromancy, she learns her powers are much stronger than they should be. Ghosts have been more hindrance than help in the past, but there’s one particular ghost who could provide information the group needs. If only Chloe can figure out how to contact her…

Review by Tez Miller

There’s a war brewing between Shadow Wolves and Werewolves in L. A. Banks’ Undead on Arrival.

Genetics, the military and the paranormal all feature in this third instalment of the Crimson Moon series. Newcomers will easily get lost trying to figure out the differences between clans and packs, Shadow Wolves and Werewolves, and who’s related to whom. In addition, some characters have different names for their different forms (human and wolf), and others are simply referred to as “Hunter’s mother” or “Shogun’s mother”. And since relations are a big issue here, this is rather confusing.

Review by Tez Miller

In my review of Key to Conflict, I expressed dismay at the use of forced sex by a ghost to move forward the plot. In Any Given Doomsday, the one feature that’s keeping me from recommending it is the repeated use of sex under duress (or sex under the influence) to propel the character forward. Elizabeth Phoenix, former cop and a psychometric, is dragged into a world of supernatural demons and the battle between good and evil kicking and screaming. Her foster mother gives her the “gift” of becoming a seer, one of the guides for demon killers who identifies threats to be eliminated, with her dying breath.

Review by Alana Abbott

After twilight, when the morning comes and the sun rises, will anyone be left alive?

Travis Adkins follows up Twilight of the Dead with a new adventure for the surviving Black Berets and the citizens of the walled town of Eastpointe. This book picks up the very next morning and continues the story after the characters confrontation with the mad Dr. Dane from the previous novel.

I’m going probably going to have some major spoilers in this review, so don’t read any further if you want to discover these story elements on your own. You’ve been warned…

Dog Days gets off to a somewhat awkward start with too much exposition during an action sequence to make the action feel immediate, but as I got accustomed to the voice of Mason, the hero and jazz/magic improvisation master that narrates the book, the world and story both began to come together. As a practitioner, Mason isn’t much good at the actual practice implied by such a title. His real talent is improvisational magic–something that most people never master at all. Other practitioners use spells to control magic, but Mason can pull energy from the surrounding environment, using ideas and archetypes and emotions to craft the effects he desires. He also has Louie: an Ifrit (named after the djinn, though no one is sure if they’re related) who takes the form of a small, mini-doberman like dog.

Review by Alana Abbott

Tales of the Seven Dogs Society is a collection of three novellas by authors, Matt McElroy, Jim Johnson, and Monica Valentinelli, based on the Aletheia role playing game from Abstract Nova Entertainment.

The basic premise of this book as well as the game is that the Seven Dogs Society is a group of investigators comprised of seven people who possess psychic or paranormal abilities. Based in Seven Dogs, Alaska at a refurbished Victorian mansion with powers of its own, the Society investigates cases involving things such as alien abduction, crop circles, spontaneous combustion, and all other manner of other worldly and supernatural phenomena.

Review by Jason Thorson

Human assassin Artemis Entreri and his dark elf companion Jarlaxle have come to the demon-haunted wastelands of the frozen north at the request of their dragon patron. It doesn’t take long for them to find themselves caught in the middle of a struggle between powerful forces that would like nothing more than to see them both dead . . . or worse.

But Entreri and Jarlaxle aren’t just any wandering sellswords, and the ancient evils and bitter blood-feuds of the wild Bloodstone Lands may have finally met their match.

The Sellswords Series has my attention. Largely because while it’s not Drizzt, Bruenor, Regis, Cattie-Brie and Wulfgar…but it’s set parallel to those stories.

Review by Jeff Preston

It starts with an ill conceived radio show. Megan Chase is a respected psychologist, as well as a psychic who uses her talents to help her patients without their knowledge. In order to stop a colleague whose practices she despises from becoming the psychology voice of radio, Megan takes a job as a radio host, which advertises her as a demon slayer. Understandably enough, the personal demons–small demons that encourage people to make bad choices and commit crimes–are a little threatened by what they view of as a declaration of war. But Megan is unaware of the world of demons, beyond her own psychic abilities, and so when she is approached by a mysterious (and sexy) figure who offers her help, she doesn’t know why she’ll need it, or why she should trust him. As it turns out, mysterious and sexy is Greyson Dante, who is also a demon, but is determined to keep Megan safe, whether she wants his help or not.

Review by Alana Abbott

I love Richelle Mead’s stuff, so I was completely ready to be won over by the new series, “Dark Swan,” from the first time she posted an excerpt on her site. Both the excerpt and the novel, Storm Born, begin with shaman Eugenie Markham, also known as Odile Dark Swan, exorcising a shoe. What’s not to like? Eugenie is a lonely heroine working in a sort of mercenary line of demon slaying–taking calls, getting rid of spirits by banishing them either to the Other world or the world of the Dead, and getting paid. She doesn’t make friends easily, and has only her assistant Lara (most often a voice on the phone rather than human contact) and her roommate Timothy “Red Horse” (who masquerades as an “authentic” Native American, despite his Polish heritage).

Review by Alana Abbott

Dante Valentine’s past comes back to haunt her in Lilith Saintcrow’s Dead Man Rising.

Rigger Hall, a hellish school that damaged much more than it taught its students, was mentioned in the first novel of this series, Working for the Devil. It’d be an interesting (but too much like snuff) setting for a spinoff YA series, but instead it’s the plot for this novel. This futuristic urban fantasy is perfect for readers fed up with cutesy-faff paranormals. Don’t expect to smile and be merry, but do expect to read something of great merit.

Demimonde, by Justin Achilli, isn’t a pleasant novel to read through. It is coarse, over-wrought, overindulgent in so many ways and unapologetic about all of it. It is Brett Easton Ellis for the 21st century. It is Less Than Zero meets American Psycho, with a dash of Nietzsche, a few sprinkles of Emmanuel Kant and whole lot of King James.

Demimonde refers to the shadowy world of the unvisible, those people gifted with the ability to not be noticed, to be the glimpses on the periphery while feeding their excesses beyond all normal limits. The demimonde is a fae world, where zombies exist because of the faith in their existence but where all-too-human political and religious ideologies rule over both conscious and unconscious thought.

Review by Joe Rixman

Riley Jenson hunts down two serial killers, in Keri Arthur’s The Darkest Kiss.

One of the murderers is targeting Melbourne’s rich and powerful; including the infamous Toorak Trollops (they’re not prostitutes, just skanks). The other murderer is hitting closer to Riley. All their security systems can’t save the high society types from gruesome deaths. Among the charity functions and whatnot, I almost expected Lillian Frank to pop up and spout something about polo.

Instead, we get Quinn O’Conor, the vampire Riley was emoing over in the previous novel, Embraced by Darkness. Their relationship seems rather superficial, so why they seem so tied to one another, I don’t quite understand. But Riley’s relationships have never been a series drawcard for me: the mysteries are.

A World Torn Asunder is the first book in the Vampire Apocalypse series by Derek Gunn. Secretly vampires have existed alongside humanity for generations, hunting and killing from the shadows. A series of events, including a fuel shortage, allows the vampires to step out of the dark corners of modern society and forcibly take over vast areas of the world. They and their minions slaughter any humans that resist and build caged cities for the rest.

This book focuses on the efforts of a small group of resistance fighters that hope to stage a last-ditch attack on the local vampire lord and rescue some of the citizens trapped behind the walls of the city. They face a number of threats, including the minions of the vampires, called Thralls, who have superior weapons and some supernatural abilities.

I’m frankly a sucker for many things — ghost stories and samurai films among them. On discovering the book In the Service of Samurai by Gloria Oliver, I was pleased to discover that two of my passions had been rolled into one package.

In the Service of Samuari tells the story of a young apprentice mapmaker, Chizuson Toshiro or “Toshi,” who is purchased from his master to act as navigator for a strange samurai with an even stranger ship and crew. Cursed and betrayed in life, the undead Samurai and his ghostly men must wander the sea until they have completed their mission. In the end, only Toshi’s wits and determination can help them see it through. The tension of the story grows as Toshi learns to accept his situation.

One of the great elements of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series is the large cast of interesting characters that Harry Dresden encounters throughout his adventures. Friends, foes and fellow wizards make up a variety of supernatural (and a few “normal”) beings in the Dresden-verse. One of the most interesting characters is Harry’s half-brother Thomas Raith, who also happens to be a vampire.

Although the marketing for this tale makes claims of it being a novella, I’d have to say it is more of a short story with great art. Without the fancy hardcover or the illustrations by Mignolla this would fit just fine in one of the urban fantasy anthologies we’ve seen other Dresden Files tales in (My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding for example).

Riley Jenson needs all her supernatural abilities to hunt down a particularly eerie serial killer, in Keri Arthur’s Embraced by Darkness.

Riley Jenson is one of the Directorate of Other Races’ guardians, trained to hunt and destroy her prey. With both vampire and werewolf genes, she is mostly werewolf, but has a host of other paranormal skills: she can switch her vision to infrared, is clairvoyant, and can wrap shadows around herself. Mixing searching for a missing pack member and investigating recent serial murders, Riley’s on the hunt.

Review by Tez Miller