I don’t read urban fantasy – or so I thought. I tried a novel or two when the bookshelves started to fill up with covers depicting women scantily clad in black leather, all with tattoos on their lower backs and weapons of one sort or another in their hands, but they seemed rather generic and – at least the ones I read – not all that well-written.

Then I heard about that M.L.N. Hanover was actually Daniel Abraham, the author of the Long Price Quartet. So far I’ve only read the first in that series, A Shadow in Summer, but I admired it greatly, and am looking forward to reading the next three straight in a row when time allows. So much did I like Abraham’s work that I was willing to take another chance on urban fantasy and try out the two novels in the series titled The Black Sun’s Daughter, written by Abraham’s alter ego.

I’m glad I did. The two novels published in the series to date, Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels, are a kick to read, just pure adrenaline-fueled fun. I haven’t had this much pure entertainment since I rode the Screaming Eagle at Six Flags in Gurney, Illinois a million years ago. I wish there were more books in this series available right now, because I’d swallow them whole right this minute.

Unclean Spirits starts when Eric Heller dies and leaves his entire estate to his niece, Jayné Heller (her first name is pronounced zha-nay, but it’s frequently mispronounced as plain old Jane). Jayné is just a few days shy of her twenty-third birthday when she learns that she has suddenly become wealthy – the kind of wealthy that not only doesn’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from, but doesn’t even have to worry about keeping a roof over her head, because she can always pay cash for a house if she needs one. She meets her uncle’s lawyers and his assistant, Aubrey, all of whom seem normal. Although she’s pretty dazed at her sudden good fortune – especially given that she’s just dropped out of college, has been disowned by her immediate family, and hadn’t figured out what to do with herself when this news came out of the blue – everything seems as normal as it can seem when you’ve essentially won the lottery but lost the only relative you cared about.

That is, it seems normal until Jayné goes to her uncle’s apartment in Denver and finds a corpse in the bedroom. Things quickly get worse when the corpse opens its eyes and speaks to her. But everything’s okay; Midian is simply very, very old. In fact, he was born the year they stormed the Bastille, he explains. And oh, by the way, it was a bunch of evil wizards who killed her uncle. Jayné is dubious until four figures break into the apartment and try to kill her, and she is able to fight with a great deal more ability than she ever imagined. Between the two of them, Midian and Jayné kill the four strangers – and Jayné is now deeply into something about which she knows nothing.

Unclean Spirits tells the tale of how Jayné begins to learn who her uncle was and what magic is, and a very little bit about who she is herself. She does this while attempting to destroy the magician who killed her uncle, working with his allies. There are a number of disasters along the way, including the near death of a young man Jayné finds herself beginning to love. Relationships with others begin for the sake of convenience and turn into strong bonds of friendship and sometimes enmity. As the book ends, Jayné is still alive and has accomplished what she set out to do, but she is still almost completely ignorant about her inheritance – both in terms of what material things are out there, and in terms of what she has gained by learning of the magical world she lives in. Jayné is strong, sexy and smart, but she isn’t too much of any of these; she is far more real and vulnerable than your average heroine.

Darker Angels opens six months later. During the interim, Jayné has had her staff – her uncle’s former assistant and two men who had helped him out from time to time, one an ex-priest known as Ex and one who is – well, Chogyi Jake is hard to describe, but the feeling emanating from the character is peace, even in the context of incredible violence. The group is in Athens, Greece, performing an inventory of Jayné Uncle Eric’s possessions in his house – now Jayné’s house – magical and otherwise. They’ve been skipping from city to city around the world doing the same thing, and they’re all exhausted.

Which means they’re not really in good shape to take on a new case. But when a call comes in to Eric’s cellphone (still programmed to say “Hey, you’ve got a call” in Eric’s voice, freaking out everyone who hears it) from a former client, asking for help in New Orleans, Jayné jumps at the chance to get more information about her uncle. If it means dealing with a supernatural beastie attempting to take over a teenager’s body, well, why not perform a good deed in the meantime?

But Jayné and her group are getting involved with New Orleans voodoo, and they don’t know the territory. Legba gives Jayné a good, strong warning early on that she barely survives; but Jayné is stubborn. The group fractures under the pressure, but still the notion of helping that teenager is so compelling that Jayné can’t help but soldier on.

In this second book, each of the characters becomes more clearly defined. Ex is no longer merely the one who performs exorcisms; he is a whole person, with his own loves and past and issues. Chogyi Jake becomes something more of a mascot to the group, with the way he exudes calm, though he is still more of a cipher than the others. Aubrey and Jayné both develop and retard their relationship, much like relationships usually work.

In the meantime, the reader gets a good look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And the reader gets a lesson in voodoo and the power it gives its practitioners in this alternate universe, especially to women. And it’s all written with such tension that the book nearly vibrates in your hand. I read it in less than 24 hours, barely pausing to work, eat or sleep.

So I guess I read urban fantasy after all. At least, I read it when it’s written by M.L.N. Hanover. This is great stuff, and at mass market paperback prices, you can’t afford to pass it up. ( )

Jayne's uncle Eric dies unexpectedly and Jayne inherits more than she expected. Turns out here uncle was some sort of shaman/demon killer and he was in the middle of a job when he died. Jayne and a bunch of guys that Eric knew team together to finish the job. Actually, the book was better than that cliched description, I liked that Jayne was the daughter of extremely conservative Bible thumpers and how her parents beliefs tripped her occassionally. (though I did think it odd that they would call their daughter, exotically, Jayne. And then call their son Jay? Clearly overlooked in editing!) I liked the unliked crew that forms, esp Midian and Chogyi Jake. I didn't mind the world building, though it wasn't anything especially clever or new. It was familiar but well written enough that it was fun to spend time with these characters and I'll quite likely look for them in the next book that comes out. ( )

The premise: When Jayne Heller's uncle is murdered, she's shocked to learn that not only did he leave her EVERYTHING, but there was more to him than the millions upon millions he bestowed upon his niece. Eric was locked in a battle with the wizards of the Invisible College, and that battle got him killed. Jayne thinks it's all crap, and that her uncle's friends and colleagues are insane, but when the Invisible College targets her, she's got to do whatever it takes to survive.

My Rating

Must Have: I must admit, after reading the disappointment that was Hunting Ground, I was worried that my reading tastes were changing to the point that urban fantasy just wasn't going to do it for me any more. NOT SO. This is a solid book that takes the familiar conventions of urban fantasy and just does a great job with them. There's so much of this book that's made of win, but the heroine and her supporting cast just really shine. I can see these characters as real people, because they act as real people do, flaws and all. Most important, they're able to fail and get back up again, and I loved reading an urban fantasy plot that evolved out of the cast's actions rather than the cast reacting to actions completely outside of their control. This book is such a must have that I want to buy it again, and I'm not kidding: for whatever reason, book two, Darker Angels, will be released in mass-market instead of trade, and I want the mass-market copy of Unclean Spirits so my books look the same on the shelf. That's how much this book is worth it: I'm willing to buy it TWICE. So ignore the stereotypical cover, and don't fret over the prologue and seemingly more traditional UF elements in the book, because I promise, by time you're done, you're going to enjoy almost every second of the ride.

Review style: stream-of-conscious style, because there isn't a tangible divide between what I liked and what I didn't. I liked it a lot, and it's easy to explain why. Spoilers? Yes, because the spoilers help distinguish what makes this urban fantasy stand out from the rest. So if spoilers don't bother you, feel free to hop over to my LJ for the full review. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. :)

REVIEW: M.L.N. Hanover's UNCLEAN SPIRITS

Happy Reading! ( )

pretty decent book. plot was fast paced, the characters believabe. The villain was good. I think I would like a little more character development, and perhaps more setting and imagery. ( )

21 Words or Less: An Urban Fantasy offering that doesn’t try to reinvent the genre but is so well written it doesn’t need to.

Rating: 4/5 stars

The Good: Excellent Urban Fantasy, great characters I want to see more of, natural dialogue, fast-reading prose.

The Bad: The cover, some gender specific details are jarring, a few “paranormal romance” tropes, the cover

Unclean Spirits is the debut novel in the Black Sun’s Daughter series. The story itself is simple: Jayne Heller inherits her uncle’s fortune and accepts his legacy as well, setting out to finish the job he died attempting and to kill the man responsible for his death. We get the typical cast of characters complete with questionable loyalties, mysterious pasts, and more than a hint of sexual tension.

Sounds like a typical Urban Fantasy book, right? In some respects it is; Unclean Spirits doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground. But what it lacks in innovation, it more than makes up for in quality. There’s a lot of Urban Fantasy books out there, some good, some bad, most falling somewhere in the middle. Unclean Spirits reads like Hanover/Abraham consumed everything he could, both good and bad, really thought about what worked and what didn’t, and then sat down and wrote a novel. There’s angst without being whiny, humor without being cliché or punny, inter-character chemistry that is subtle and natural. The bad guys don’t summarize their plots while waiting for the characters to recover and there isn’t a leather trenchcoat with bottomless pockets of just the perfect solution for the situation at hand. All of the characters are interesting and mysterious enough to want to see more. Unclean Spirits is everything that’s right with the genre with almost none of the wrong.

Abraham makes it look easy. The dialogue feels realistic, like something you might actually hear real twenty-somethingse say while moving the story quickly along with a “show don’t tell” style that is a lot more rare than you’d think. Like most Urban Fantasy, the story is very character driven and my enjoyment of the book really stemmed from their interactions. All of the characters worked as they were really written but I felt like Midian really stole every scene he was in. His dark humor and calm collectedness really complemented Jayne’s gradual entry into the world of “riders” and magic. His aptitude for cooking and poker prowess were also brilliant touches, a natural result of two hundred years of life experience.
In the end, the dialogue, the characters, and everything else really worked well together, making Unclean Spirits a fun, fast read that was well worth my time.

The only grievances I had with Unclean Spirits were more on my end than on Hanover’s/Abraham’s. The story is written from a first person perspective and in most FP narratives, it’s extremely easy to get into the main character. Unclean Spirits is no exception. There's nothing wrong with that but Jayne’s a woman. I’m not. The only problems arose when there was a distinctly feminine detail that I couldn’t identify with. For example, at one point, Jayne is picking out some clothes and realizing that none of her shirts would hide any of her clean bras. That’s not a problem I’ve ever had. Now there isn’t anything wrong with these details, they just made the book occasionally (and it’s very very occasionally at that) jarring for me as a reader, compounded by my awareness that it was a male writer writing a female perspective. But again, this was my issue as a reader not a problem with Abraham’s/Hanover’s writing. In much the same way, I had a few problems with the pace at which some of the relationships in the story developed. They were a little fast for me, but again that’s my own personal bias. It’s most likely not an issue for most readers.

I also had some minor qualms with how the magic system (and Jayne’s seemingly innate abilities) were’t fully fleshed out in Unclean Spirits and some of the character back stories remained untold. These aren’t necessarily bad things as I’m sure these details will come to light in future volumes. While Abraham/Hanover probably could have provided more detail, the results might have felt forced or unnatural especially considering that no one was fully aware at the full extent of Eric Heller’s work before his death. Again, it boils down to the Show don’t Tell writing philosophy that Abraham deftly utilizes. Not to mention that the hints at a deeper story leave the reader looking forward to the next volume. I know I am.

As I mentioned in my apology earlier, the first book was a gift from Mr. Abraham. I’ll definitely be buying the next one myself. ( )