Lilith Saintcrow

Excellent! Her protagonists were damaged, but nowhere near broken - Saintcrow likes to break her characters a bit too much for me, but this one worked. The descriptions, characters, dialog, and plot were Saintcrow's usual deep, rich, complex work; the setting is fascinating, a steampunk/fantasy (early) Victorian England. I actually enjoyed Clare's deductions - I usually detest Holmes-style "he has red dirt on his boots and therefore was born here and last ate dinner at this inn and...", but show more Clare made it work for me. And Bannon's style of magic was weird (even before she unleashed her Discipline) and amazing. The secondary characters are just as rich - and I am delighted that there's no romance subplot between the protagonists, it's so rare to find that. We are kind of dropped into the middle of events, but deducing what happened before is a large part of the story - the characters are trying to figure it out, too. Love it, want the next. show less

Picking up this series kinda blindly, I wasn't really sure where to categorize it in the UF world. Obviously, it's a kick-ass female with magic and blade, but you know how that is. Seen it on the shelves a MILLION TIMES. Huh. Even the blurb just tugs at my old heartstrings for Anita Blake and Rachel Morgan. I thought it was a throwaway blurb.

But then I learned how wrong I was.

Imagine this: It's bladerunnerish, high-tech noir with hovercraft, laser pulse rifles, juicy biotech implants, show more gene-splicing. It's also rune magic, Annubis-based necromancy, whole schools of magic, and even eclectic voodoo, ritual, and a lot more right out in the open. It's open trade for SF and Fantasy in this near-future overpopulated world.

So delicious.

And then there's Dante with her deep connection with Annubis and her dripping holy blue fire blade, her strong necromantic craft for sale for lawyers, the police, or anyone with the means to pay. And she's got a new job from a character she can't quite refuse: Lucifer. Who wants her to assassinate another demon. As a little backup, she gets a high-level demon as a backup... and as a familiar.

Holy crapola.

So wait a second.

Not only are we getting to levels of necromancy only seen 7-8 books into Anita Blake, but we're also moving ahead to powers equivalent to books 4-5 in Rachel Morgan. In Blade Runner.

OH, MY GOD, I AM SO IN LOVE.

And it's true. I slammed through this book kinda dancing with glee. And yes there's a bit of UF romance but it takes a back seat to the action and intrigue... just as I prefer it. And let me be a bit clear about where I place this in my favorite UF categories. I have some series I love for being imaginative and others for being super charming and classy, but my first love is for outright powerups and bitch'n kick-ass magics.

This one is pulling on those heartstrings HARD. :) show less

Read: August 2023
Rating 5/5 stars

It has been a long time since I read a book that I was so invested in that I had to force myself to put it down to go to sleep. Duty was such a good read; Saintcrow has a distinctive writing style that takes a couple of pages to get used to and then it just flows. Ostensibly, this is the second book in the Ghost Squad series, but it can easily be read as a stand-alone. There are a few small references to the first book, Damage, but nothing that detracts from show more the plot as it focuses around two new characters in a new setting.

Paul is a soldier and member of the elite unit known as the Ghost Squad. He is injured and sent home to his rundown, claustrophobic small town of Granite River. He finds his old childhood sweetheart Rebecca 'Beck' Sommers, living with his Aunt Helena after she fled from her abusive husband, who also happens to be the deputy sheriff in town.

The writing is excellent, as always with Saintcrow, and the story moves along at a quick pace. I liked the fact there was a clear villain in Beck's ex Joe, who was just awful, and the wider conspiracy surrounding the meth dealers and the meth labs in the woods outside town.

My only complaint would be the slow pace of the romance, although it makes sense in the context of Beck's situation with Joe, and also I had hoped we would find out more about why Beck's mother, and if it was really that she'd just ran away and left her daughter behind. I thought there'd be some kind of revelation that she was actually murdered by one of the shady characters but it never happened. show less

4.5/5
Leave it to Lili to venture into steampunk and make her first book the most steampunkish I've read this year. She just doesn't do anything by halves.

Unbelievable, meticulous attention to detail. Clockwork horses and altered mechanically, seedy criminals of the underworld, reincarnated Britannia in each queen of England, here be dragons, griffins... and rise and fall of sorcerous forces each dawn and dusk.

The trademark of Miss Saintcrow's writing is still here, - extremely strong main show more heroine, Emma Bannon, a sorceress and Prime of the most dangerous of magic, Death magic, serving the Queen herself and trying to protect her by any means possible.

Emma crushes and subjugates everything and everyone in her way, she is destructive force of nature, paranoid and afraid that her own warrior-protector, her magical Shield, Mikal, is ready to kill her and works beside her back.

Archibald Clare is an entirely different matter. He is not an equal partner to Emma and there is certainly no romantic spark between them. He is a mentath, a person whose brain has to find logical connections in everything, even the most minuscule parts. He is like Sherlock Holmes on crack, he will go mad if his brain is not occupied by a complicated task.

But someone is killing mentaths one by one and taking their body parts, so Emma's task is to protect Archibald and at the same time work with him on uncovering a multi-layered conspiracy which threatens the foundations of British Empire.

It's a fantastic adventure, but it took few chapters for me to get used to the overabundance of detail and pretty rigid main heroine. However, once you warm up to this book, it really gets to you. There is sly humour and well-rounded characters, - Mikal, desperate to gain his sorceress's trust, Clare, curious and analytical about everything, Ludovico, a grubby assassin, who is tasked with Clare's protection and Emma herself, whose true nature shows through her actions towards those she protects, not through her cold and ruthless talk.

I am extremely excited to know more about the world Lili created and looking forward to Emma and Archibald's further adventures. Recommended to all fans of steampunk, especially Iron Seas series by Meljean Brook, and Miss Saintcrow's writing style in general. show less