Read This Book: White Cat, by Holly Black

Today’s Book: White Cat (The Curse Workers #1) by Holly Black


A Little Background: The setting is something of a parallel universe - our world, but not exactly - in the modern era of computers and the like. Where it differs, of course, is in the inclusion of a section of people who can work curses simply by touching you with their bare hands. In this book, we learn about emotion workers, body workers (who can break bones with a touch), luck workers, memory workers, dream workers, and two rarer groups: death workers and transformation workers. In the United States of this America, Working is a crime, which means that criminals do the Working - the top crime families (like the mob) all have big Worker populations. To protect oneself against "the touch," everyone wears gloves and you can buy amulets against curses along with a pack of smokes at the gas station, though there's no guarantee it'll be as good as one purchased from a psychic's tent at a dirt mall.

The Meat of the Story: Cassel Sharpe, youngest of three brothers in a Worker family, has no power of his own. His eldest brother, Philip, works for the Zacharov family, and bears a necklace of scars to prove it, which is likened to the Yakuza practice of counting prison years (look it up.) Three years ago, Cassel killed his friend Lila Zacharov, and now can only remember standing over her bloody body with a knife and a satisfied smile. Now, he's taking after his mother's con-man (con-woman) roots by running a numbers game out of his room at his private boarding school.
When he gets temporarily kicked out for sleepwalking, and sent home to work with his brothers and his retired death-worker Grandad, things start to spiral out of his control, and he finds that his life isn't what he thought it was.
What you’ll Love About It: It’s interspersed with great asides about what Cassel loves about the con, and enough background on the Workers and their history, so that you feel like even though this isn’t your world, you know enough about it that it makes sense to you. You’ll be drawn in by veteran writer Black, and eagerly await the other books in this series; the next is Red Glove, which is likely due out sometime next year.


Bonus: To advertise the books, the Curse Workers website offers banners like these, that might actually show up on billboards and subway signs in Cassel's world.

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You won't rue reading this book!

Today’s Book: Rosemary and Rue, Seanan McGuire


The plot: October “Toby” Daye, once both a Knight (who prefers to be called “Sir Daye”) and private detective, finds her life as a changeling infinitely more difficult when she tries to rebuild it fourteen years after being turned into a fish by a rival of her liege lord, Sylvester. Toby’s lost everything – her boyfriend, Cliff, who thought she was human; her daughter, Gillian, who is now 17 and angry, refusing to see her; and her lord, Sylvester, whom she’s been afraid to see since her return. She’s thrown back into the world of rites to royalty and magical mysteries when her “worst friend and best enemy,” Evening Winterrose, is found murdered in her warded home.

Why You’ll Love It: It’s a gripping mystery with a lot of urban fantasy thrown in to the mix, and as Toby delves into the dark side of her past and present (and maybe even future), you’ll learn about the world of the fullblooded fairies and the halfblooded changelings that inhabit the California coast. You’ll cheer for “Sir Daye” as she tries to find the murderer without getting murdered herself.


Who Will/Should Read It: Fans of any urban fantasy will do well here, but maybe the best audience for Toby’s mystery would be readers of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series who find the graphic sex there a little too bawdy. Newcomer McGuire manages to get the point across with innuendo, rather than explicitness. There’s also a lot to like for devotees of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series; if you’re eagerly awaiting April’s “Changes,” pick this noirish novel up.

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Author Profile: Tanya Huff

Writing since the early 1980s, Canadian author Tanya Huff experienced a new burst of popularity when Lifetime (the television channel) turned her "Blood Books" into a series for two seasons. She writes for a living, mostly science fiction and urban fantasy, as well as short stories that sometimes aren’t connected to any of her major works. If you like Jim Butcher, who we profiled last month, give Tanya Huff a try!

Blood Price (The Blood Books)
This is the first in the Victory Nelson/Blood Books series (five books total, now released in three two-book omnibus format), which also includes a number of short stories. Vicki “Victory” Nelson is a private detective who used to be a cop; she had to quit the force because of her deteriorating eyesight, and now makes a living trying not to step on the force (or her former partner, Mike Celluci)’s toes. The first time we meet Victory, she’s stumbling upon what appears to be a mass murder case – but she later finds, with the help of 500-year-old vampire Henry Fitzroy, that it’s not just any murderer who’s come calling.
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Smoke and Ashes (The Smoke Trilogy)
If after the Blood Books, you want more Henry Fitzroy, try The Smoke Trilogy. Here, Henry has left Toronto for Vancouver, taking with him Victory Nelson’s one-time informant Tony. Tony, who is discovering he’s more than a vampire’s sometimes-boyfriend, works for the most popular television show in North America, Darkest Night, and happens across all manner of supernatural bad guys while looking like any other lowly production assistant.
(This is the second book in the trilogy. Smoke and Shadows is the first.)
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Summon the Keeper (The Keeper’s Chronicles)
All of Huff’s modern books take place in various places across her home country of Canada, and although many of them are ten and twenty years old, none of the stories seem dated. Here, in the Keeper’s Chronicles, we meet Claire the Keeper, destined to protect the Earth when necessary. In this, the first book, Claire must seal a portal to Hell (which happens to be in the basement of a bed and breakfast) with the help of a talking cat, a very dead ghost, and a cook.
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Heart of Valor (The Confederation)
After Valor’s Choice, and The Better Part of Valor, this third book revisits heroine Torin Kerr, who’s been promoted to Marine Gunnery Sergeant. The Confederation novels explore how many species might live together out on the rims of space, and on space stations.
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Finding Magic (Short Stories)
From a few stories set in the Confederation world (like the really hilarious “I Knew a Guy Once”) to a thrashing retelling of the classic faerie tale “Tam Lin” – here called “He Said, Sidhe Said,” Huff visits new worlds, and tells stories from old favorites. A latest story about Tony is found here, too. There are three other short story collections by Tanya Huff, as well, all with ‘Magic’ somewhere in the title.
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Outside of a Dog, #45

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx.

Faeries aren’t just for kids these days. Thanks to paranormal romance authors like Laurell K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon, there are a number of novels with the mysterious men (and women!) of Faerie. [Be aware – some of these books tend towards the steamy side of romance!]

The Legend of Drizzt (Series) – R.A. Salvatore

Drizzt Do’Urden is a dark elf who turns his back on the evil matriarchal society he was born into, called the Underdark. Since he left, he’s become a champion and hero of the Forgotten Realms world, appearing in nearly twenty books since his first appearance in Homeland, in 1990.

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A Kiss of Shadows – Laurell K. Hamilton

The first in the Merry Gentry series, this book introduces an alternate history of the world (much like Hamilton’s best-selling Anita Blake series; where vampires are legal citizens) – Merry is the daughter of a king, and therefore, a princess. However, she must return to the faerie mounds underground to face her aunt, who wants Merry to give her an heir to the Unseelie Court.

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Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell – Susanna Clarke

Another alternate-history novel – this one about the return of magic to England, courtesy of the two title gentlemen. They deal with magic, fairies, and enchantments, and famed members of fairy stories and courts.

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Faefever – Karen Marie Moning

Third in the series that started with Darkfever, Faefever picks up with the protagonist MacKayla Lane finding a piece of her murdered sister’s journal. Still seeking answers in the dark world she now inhabits, MacKayla must make alliances, and still accomplish her destiny – the finding of a book that claims to hold the key to power over the worlds of Fae and Man. This is far from her last chance, though – author Moning has two more “Fever” books in the works.

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Get Bitten by this book!

Today’s Book: Bitten, by Kelley Armstrong

The plot: Elena Michaels is the only known female werewolf. After being bitten (which is what turned her into a werewolf in the first place), she spent her time with The Pack, an organized family of mostly hereditary werewolves, run much in the way of a real wolf pack. At the beginning of the book, she’s been gone from the Pack for a year, trying to live among humans, most notably Philip, her live-in boyfriend. When the Pack Alpha calls her back from Toronto to New York to help with an uprising of ‘mutts’ (werewolves, usually bitten, who aren’t affiliated with The Pack), she goes because she feels she owes them. That’s, of course, when the story gets really interesting, since she left her werewolf ‘brothers’ and more than a few matters unsettled.

Bitten is the first of Armstrong’s “Women of the Otherworld” series, though they can be read out of order, due to the large cast of characters. The series involves werewolves, like Elena and The Pack, as well as witches, demons, and vampires.

Why You’ll Love It: The series began as a short story influenced by an X-Files episode about werewolves, and now enjoys status as one of the brightest and best urban fantasies. Bitten is a new take on an old favorite in werewolf books, and once you’ve met headstrong Elena, you’ll want to keep reading about her in the books that follow – Stolen and Broken, and you may even branch out into the other Otherworld books, short stories, and novellas, some available online at the author's web site.

Who Will/Should Read It: Fans of the Urban Fantasy genre, or anyone who enjoys a good otherwordly murder mystery. There’s a little gore and some sex scenes, though they’re mostly tame as compared to other authors in the genre.

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