Thinning the Herd by Adrian Phoenix

Fortune tellers and hippies are dying in large numbers in Oregon – only noticed by one man. A man sworn to protect the city, a hero in his own mind, a man who knows the secrets of the supernatural

Hal, a Dogcatcher, And he wields a mean catchpole.

I just… can’t even begin to express my opinions about the protagonist, Hal. On so many levels he’s a parody of awfulness. He’s clueless, arrogant and ridiculously full of himself and his abilities and his roles. He is also skilled, talented, brave and in some ways every bit the hero he thinks he is. At the same time, while he’s an appalling joke, he’s constantly treated as that – he’s often terrible and ridiculous but, at the same time, I think we’re fully expected to see him as that. He’s awful, but I don’t think we’re meant to ignore the fact – hence his constant abuse of poor cyclists for example. I don’t think we’re expected to see his truly epic fighting skills and not think that he’s also totally a cool person which he clearly isn’t.

And I can’t deny that he’s funny. His interactions with the people around him, his ridiculous belief that he’s not just a superhero but that everyone fully knows about it. His firm refusal to deal with reality, his happy poking of corpses… it’s funny, it’s really really funny.

I just don’t know with this guy. I alternate being repelled and amused by him – and I think that’s intentional

It helps that some of the characters around him – especially the two other main characters: Nicka and Galahad - is pretty amazing and hilarious. They are both yokai, kind of reverse were-animals, animal that become human during the day. So we have a cat, with all the immense sarcasm that requires, and a wolf – who can easily be distracted by a well thrown squeaky toy (of course, the cat can easily be fascinate by a bell as well).

The three of them make for a hilariously combination. And I like the idea if were animals that aren’t you classic human-to-animal because why not have both? I’m not so sure about calling them “yokai” though, especially in a setting that has no Asian characters.

On Midnight Wings (Maker's Song #5) by Adrian Phoenix

Dante and Heather are still separated by the various factions trying to hunt Dante down, while Lucien, Von and the gang continue to hunt for them. But between Fallen machinations and the call of the Llygad, neither is able to launch the rescue efforts they would like to.

Heather continues to extricate herself from tricky situations to try and reach Dante, but every time she breaks out of one trap there appears to be another waiting and time is running out – Dante, held by Dion and tormented by Loki, is fraying. His fragile mind is growing more and more damaged as he approaches his limit

If he breaks, he will become the Great Destroyer, the Unending Road, using his awesome powers of creation for destruction – and then the world is doomed or those who love him most may be forced to kill him.

Right, let’s start with some major positives. First and foremost, the 8 gazillion unnecessary cast members are largely taking a back seat. Largely. They’re still there and mentioned far too often in passing and in any other book I would be yelling “kill some side characters, damn it!” but for this series they have been cut down by them both teaming up (so forming less random groups with their own agendas) and by them just not getting the same level of page time as they have in previous books. For the most part, the book has managed to stay relatively focused on Dante and Heather with only a few distractions as you’d find in most books.

Another positive is that the bad guys that were actually relevant this book were fairly major powers. Mauvais was there, hanging around finally coming to terms with just how big a hornet’s nest he’s kicked which was great fun to read – I do like to see some good comeuppance. Heather’s father also took a step back but he’s still lurking in the corners so I don’t think we can say goodbye to him just yet. The FBI and Shadow Branch lurked around but after some initial forays fell back to leave the action more centred on the Fallen as secondary but mainly Dion. He’s a later arriving bad guy with a very petty, personal agenda more than the world destroying but at least he has some decent supernatural oomph.

Another major plus for me was that all of the overwrought emotional language, endless Dante flashbacks and fractured viewpoints, the little girl he saved, the endless memories of Chloe and papa Prejean – all the pointless minutiae of Dante’s tortured past and shattered psyche – actually came together and were relevant beyond the whole “woe is Dante, poor Dante, our tortured anti-hero is the most tortured of them all!”

It’s actually ironic considering how overwritten this series is that we haven’t truly had much information on the Great Destroyer, the Unending Road and what that means. This book brings it home – the true consequences of what they’re fighting for. Not true love. Not whether the Fallen get their creator to repair/renew/rebuild Gehenna. Not whether the various vampire societies get their shiny new True Blood vampire for whatever reason they want it – the ultimate ending is Dante’s cracked mind finally shattering, his Bad Seed programming coming up and his anger and pain exploding in horrible messy ways that results in the whole world being reduced to ash in the fires of his rage. And all those people pinning their hopes to him have to decide to stop him – if they can.

Etched in Bone (Maker's Song #4) by Adrian Phoenix

Dante has managed to wrest Lucien free from Gehenna and from the control of the Fallen – albeit while growing a set of wings in the process. But he is far from free of them as they demand a promise from him to return while they plot about how best to control him.

Things are not calmer on Earth as more and more of his enemies – a variety of rogue FBI and Shadow Branch Agents – manoeuver to find a way to bring him down or turn him into a tool. All the while he is still trying to control his broken mind, suffering from flashbacks, seizures and agonising pain.

But he has no time to heal – the local vampire boss, Mauvais has killed someone they care about and must be made to pay while the vampire factions also look to tie their own puppet strings on Dante.

Even Heather’s father is in town, with his own plans to ruin what life they’re trying to build.

There is a problem when it comes to reviewing series. The problem is that an author is (usually) unlikely to massively change their style. They’ll probably grow and change as a writer as the series progresses, but the fundamental nature of their writing usually remains somewhat the same.

Which means, as a reviewer, I run the risk of broken record syndrome. The same issues I have with book 1 are the same issues I have with book 2 and on to book 3 and, behold, the same issues arise again.

And so, here I am reading book 4 of the Maker’s Song series and, guess what? The same issues that have dogged the other books are still there. I’m sure you’re all shocked to hear that.

The characters are moving together and pairing off when their agendas are close – so we have Gillespie and Rutgers working together, we have Emmet and Merri joining the main gang, Underwood being derailed – a few of the lines are coming together or being snipped. Excellent

But more are being introduced – we now have another faction entirely, seeming to be pissed off, mind controlling Teodoro Dion (another new character, yay!) who really really hates the Fallen and is going to hurt Dante because that’ll show ‘em all! And then there’s Heather and Annie’s father who is running around with his own perverse ideas of putting their family back together again.

I have to say, again, that none of these storylines are bad.

The FBI/Shadow Branch tracking down Dante and torn between killing him, imprisoning him or monitoring him with the odd rogue agent along the side? It’s a great story and the characters are fascinating and really work well.

Beneath the Skin (Maker's Song #3) by Adrian Phoenix

Dante, Heather, Von and Annie head back to New Orleans, back home. But there are a lot of people hunting them after what happened in the last book – and Dante’s secret is now well and truly shattered

With multiple FBI agents, the Elohim from Gehenna, assassins, agents, vampires from several factions all vying for Dante’s attention, his life or his power, it’s a twisty maze to navigate

Especially since Dante’s mind is shattered, the past continually intruding into his daily senses and him constantly being brought down by agonising seizures as he tries to absorb his newly resorted memories and the horrors he’s lived through. Only Heather can anchor his damaged psyche to the present and control his omnipotent power.

I’m wondering if this book was held upside down and somehow this caused all the story to pour to the end?

Because it’s a 350 page book that has endless amounts of foreshadowing and the 8 gazillion characters all carefully moving into position before we actually get some stuff happening at about page 300.

It’s not that there’s nothing in the rest of the book – but it’s either from the VAST CAST of side characters or it’s repeating what we already know.

Dante is unstable, dangerous, has an extreme problem holding onto reality and keeps getting lost in flashbacks of his horrendous past which, unfortunately, means his quite literally omnipotent god powers go out of control. And it’s really well done – it’s extremely well written how these moments are described and you can feel the different realities colliding in his head. Sometimes with just a line of dialogue, sometimes a full seen which is brilliantly evocatively described. I take my hat off to this writing, it’s truly a master piece

And it was good the second time. And the third. And the fourth. The fifth was pretty good too and… ok, I get it! We don’t need more repetitions.

And Heather loves Dante and Dante loves Heather and Annie is disturbed and shouldn’t trusted. Repeated a hundred times.

Then there’s an FBI chase that gets called out. There’s an FBI cover up of the dramatic proportions – so we see all the detail. We see them discovering in shock and horror what happened, the sheer extent of Dante’s power and try desperately to put a lid on it. It’s, again, really well written, exciting and extremely evocative as FBI and SB agent after agent look at what happened and struggle to come to terms with the sheer power of what has happened. I love it, I love their realisation, I love their struggling to understand, I love their hurry to get control over it…

And then there’s a several page radio interview of civilians reporting on the FBI cover up… why? I already know what the FBI are doing. I saw them do it. Why do I need it rehashing? Why is this section even here.

Then there’s the FBI and SB agents running around and, in the revelation, more and more of them splintering into various factions as they grasp what is happening, what has happened and what that means for them.

So we have Merri and Emmet, vampire and human team who I like, agents of the SB they know their boss is lying to them and run away before being messed with. They go rogue and possibly hitting up a faction of vampires.

Then there’s their boss, Gillespie, who lied to them who has decided to go rogue and ignore his orders because of various reasons. He’s a separate rogue from them.

Then there’s Rutgers, who we remember went rogue last book, well she’s gone well and truly rogue now to be a full blown loose cannon.

Then there’s Underwood, the woman who drove Rutgers into going rogue. Guess what? She’s going rogue! Only less dramatically, she’s being all sneakily rogue instead.

We have Caterina, SB assassin, who already went rogue last book. But her handler is going rogue a DIFFERENT way to kill his boss because he disagrees with the rules. And she disagrees with both the boss and her handler, so she’s like rogue twice over.

Seriously, this many agents ready to go rogue it makes me wonder how such ethically questionable (in fact, let’s not mince words about assassins and torturers) managed to hold it together at all! How do they make any decisions without half of the organisation heading to the hills with guns to play loose cannon? I look forward to the day they switch to decaf – and then the caffeinated hordes of SB and FBI agents will head to the Starbucks, gun in hand ready to bring down the system and do what is right – no matter the cost (it sounds better if you read it in a dramatic movie voice over style).

And look at all those factions guys! That’s just the FBI and Shadow Branch – perhaps the most minor of the players in the book and we have a stunning 6 different factions and agenda. And every single last one of these characters has a backstory, some information about them. Ok, it’s wonderful to flesh out side characters but when you have this many there’s a huge amount of time spent on them. I know about Merri’s past as a slave when she was human. I know about Underwood’s murdered son. I know about Gillespie’s wife who left him and his drink problem. I know a whole lot about Rutger’s angst about Sherridan, one of her agents.

None of this is bad in and of itself – but when you add it all together you have an awful lot of trivia about an incredible number of characters.

Because from there we have 3 vampire factions and one, the Circle de Druide, led by Renata (Catrina’s mother, sort of) is actively involved and linked to the Shadow Branch. And her representative wings his way over the Atlantic. But the local vampires hate Dante for killing Etienne (remember him? I barely did) so they have their own agenda.

Then there’s the Elohim and Gabriel and Star and Lucien with their own machinations.

In the Blood (Maker's Song #2) by Adrian Phoenix)

After the events of the last book, the powers that be are seeking to tie up loose ends and cover up Bad Seed and make sure no-one ever knows what happens. Which means people have to be silenced – which puts Dante and Heather in a very dangerous situation with some powerful forces hunting them.

In addition, the whole events, including the dramatic death of the Bad Seed agents at Dante’s hands has brought Dante to the attention of Dr. Wells, the initial founder of Bad Seed. He has plans for Dante – as does his brilliant son – and both have the tools to manipulate Dante’s shattered mind and pull him into their web.

Then there’s the Elohim; Lucien has done his best to hide Dante from his fellows, but his song is being heard and he cannot hide much longer.

This book avoided, to an extent, the main problem I had with the first book. Of course, that’s rather to be expected – my problem was the first book being too full, with too much world building and new weird words and too many characters and too many agendas made the whole book far too full and confusing and rushed. I didn’t know where I was or what everyone was doing or even what everyone was – it took a lot of back tracking and notes and head scratching to finally get everyone in the right place.

Now with all of these characters established, the world resolved and everything set, we didn’t have to face that… except I wrote “to an extent” up there – because while the world building was already set, we still had the shifting POVs, the 10 squillion unnecessary characters and the million unnecessary agendas. We had:

Heather, Dante, Von et al. The good guys! Yay!

Then there was the Shadow Branch of the government (miscellaneous nefarious folk). Their agenda is to kill everyone to cover up Bad Seed and everything that happened in the last book

Their agent/assassin Caterina has her own agenda because of her vampire mother

Rutgers is the boss of the more conventional FBI who wants to kill a different set of people from the Shadow Branch because… I’m not even sure. Spite, I think.

Rush of Wings (Maker's Song #1) by Adrian Phoenix

Heather is an FBI agent tracking down a serial killer who has been leaving a trail of victims across the country over the last 3 years. The trail has now lead her to New Orleans

And there she finds far more than a serial killer – she finds Dante. A vampire.

But far more than just a vampire – he’s a target for her serial killer and constantly under the eye of a Fallen Angel who seems to be hiding his own secrets; not least of which the truth of Dante’s past, shrouded by his fractured memory.

Heather faces the supernatural for the first time – and the realisation it may actually exist – still has to hunt a serial killer and is embroiled in a conspiracy that cuts to the core of people she respects and her own principles.

Opening this book, I felt bombarded.

There were vampires (though they weren’t originally referred to as such, leading to more questions) and fallen (which may or may not be angels), which were referred to in many different ways, a serial killer, a nomad (who is an llygad and I still have no clue what that means but it’s apparently relevant), True Blood all without any explanation until a lot further in.

Add to that a serial killer, some bloke called Etienne who is pissed about something – and I’ve finished the book but I’m still not sure why he’s pissed, a vampire, a winged bloke, a band, some blokes at the bar who have their own agenda that isn’t instantly apparent, some local police, an FBI agent, an FBI agent’s boss and then a shadowy figure who won’t become clear until waaaaay later, scattered with a  random minor character I have no clue about – and I stagger a bit more. Especially when the random POV switches happen – at one point we POV switch to someone who I didn’t even know at that point.

Then drop in a whole load of Cajun French and some language that looks like Welsh but isn’t – none of it translated or explained (there’s a glossary at the back as I discovered at the end).

All of that together and I started to get rather irritated. It was too much at once, there was no time to grasp at anything and I kept forgetting who various people were and what they did. Ronin’s name kept escaping me, I still have no clue who Etienne is and I even forgot Heather was an FBI agent. As for Silver, Gina, et al – I had only the vaguest idea who they were and it quite destroyed the tension that was supposed to revolve around them

I actually thought I had missed a book – there was so much information here that wasn’t explained that surely I was book 3 or 4 in a series? But apparently not. This is actually the first book.

Cover Snark: POC Erasure

The above image comes from a truly excellent study into YA covers performed by Kate Hart and we strongly urge everyone to go read her brilliant piece and the amazing work she’s put in on this to raise a very vital point about publishing.

Naturally following this excellent study we cast a gaze over the books we’ve read. Before we go any further we stress that we realise this is a publisher problem, not an author problem - authors usually have very little control over the covers of their books.
Still, there is one area where authors do bear some responsibility -  most of the books we’ve read won’t have a POC on the cover quite simply because they don’t have a major POC in the actual book. The erasure that is so common in the genre automatically assumes a white person on the cover because that’s what the reader will find within anyway. Even if the publishers were saints and faithfully representing the content on the covers, we’d still see a vastly overwhelming White majority.

 

Cover Snark: Dinners Up! Come and get Your Belly Meat!

In the world of Urban Fantasy we face many supernatural beings that find humans tasty tasty treats. Of course there are vampires that drink blood - but there are also zombies, werewolves, predatory fae and a whole host of supernatural nasties that want to chow down on the sweet human flesh.

So why is this outfit so common? Is there a shortage on t-shirts? Are we rationed down to bras only? Why, in this world with lots of snacking monsters would you want to show this much prime belly meat?

Review: Black Heart Loa by Adrian Phoenix. Book 2 of the Hoodoo Series

This is one of those awkward books where we find ourselves having differing opinions about the series – however we believe this is one of taste than impressions or fails – more a case of your mileage may vary. Still, one of us is quite happy to read this series, another would rather clean tile grout.

Keille Riviere, hoodoo and persistent user of a right hook to solve all problems is still facing the fall out of the events of Black Dust Mambo. Doctor Heron's misplaced crusade of revenge still casts long shadows – and her cousin, Jackson, has gone missing, perhaps Dr. Heron's latest victim. But, more pressingly, magic is failing. Every hoodooist, voodoo priest, magician and conjurer through Louisiana is finding their spells go awry. Some reflect back against their casters, some warp – some just become completely random. Worst of all, after Katrina, wards were set across the Louisiana coast to prevent another disaster. The wards have reversed – they're now attracting and increasing hurricanes – and another Katrina is on the way.

And if that wasn't enough to be getting on with, the loa Baron Samedi thinks Keille is responsible and is quite willing to kill her to solve the problem. Then throw in some werewolves and ongoing issues with her aunt's identity theft and you have a full set.

As I said, I liked the story. It has a wide world and it manages to maintain tension surprisingly well. It also managed to cover a lot of different things happening, often at once, without it ever getting lost, confused or any element feeling completely superfluous. It's a wide world,a deep, nuanced and fascinating story with plenty of twists to keep you amused and lots of curiosity to pull you further forwards – I kept reading because I wanted to know what happened, I wanted to see how various things worked, I wanted to see what the solution was, what the consequences where, how the world fit together.

Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix

Mild spoiler warning. I don't think much is revealed and I've tried not to but I don't guarantee it.

I liked this book. Yes yes I know, if I start like that you know I'm trying to lay the groundwork against a lot of fuckery to follow. But, no, really, I like this book.

The story follows Kellie Rivière, hoodoo practitioner who has gone to visit a magical carnival run by the Hecatean Alliance, kind of international magic police/UN. It's a time to party and play with your fellow magical practitioners and Kellie has a blast – until she wakes up and finds the guy she slept with last night is now dead in her bed. And worse, the magic seems to have been aimed for her.

She now has to deal with her dead lovers surviving friends and family, the Hecatean Alliance officials and the shadows of her own traumatic past while trying to find out who is trying to kill her, her friends and her family in the name of an ongoing vendetta.

I think one of the things I love about this book is the variety of magic. We have a lot of supernatural worlds in urban fantasy where you have a thousand different magical creatures, such diversity is common. But far too often we just see “witches.” And that's it – they're witches. Magic is magic. But here we saw wiccans and hoodoo and voodoo and more formal Hecetean magic – it's interesting to see the variety of magical traditions there and the promise of more to come in future books. It interests me it does.

It was also fairly new to focus on voodoo and hoodoo as the primary characters' magical tradition. Too often these traditions are the antagonists, the evil darkness, the unknown, the scary. It's nice to see the change.

Fangs for the Fantasy Podcast! - Episode 21

This week we talk about the return of TRUE BLOOD! AT LAAAAST

We also discuss Black Dust Mambo by Adrian Phoenix as well as swipes at Anita Blake and plans for next week when we will be reading Storm Front by Jim Butcher and Changeling by Yasmine Galenorn