Jane Yellowrock is still reeling from the bond that Leo
forced on her, depressed, lost and apathetic and afraid even to shift for fear
that Beast would go running to Leo, she needs a distraction. So a call to
Natchez to kill Naturaleza vampires sounds like the best thing.
There’s some politics to play what with Leo and the
master of Natchez being officially annoyed with each other and lots of dancing
from that, but Jane handles it with her normal blunt force approach.
Except these vampires are worse than your usual
Naturaleza. They’re faster, tougher – and nearly immune to silver. And they’re
changing into something else, something insectile. This is an entirely new
threat and one more lethal and disturbing than most she has faced – something
that goes back to the very core of the vampires’ creation.
That and the increasing body count – over 100 missing and dead humans – means having to call in the government agency, PsyLed, which means calling in Ricky which means, along with Bruiser, Leo’s second showing up, Jane also has to deal with her rocky emotions over her personal life.
This is one of those hard reviews to right because so
much is done well that it creates an excellent book. But the things that were
more shaky are things I can write much more about
Which means I end up reducing the excellently well
written plot, with all the descriptions giving me just enough information to
see the scene vividly without it being bogged down, the well paced fight scenes
full of drama and excitement, the emotional quandaries that carry all of the
feeling with none of the excessive angst – to a single sentence of “it was well
paced”. Followed by several paragraphs of what I think the book did wrong
giving the end impression of my not liking the book, which couldn’t’ be further
from the truth.
The book is really well written. Everything is largely
balanced well. Jane has personal, emotional conflicts, her depression over the
actions in the last book are really well conveyed through her apathy and
tiredness far more so than by her sitting in a corner and wailing. Her
relationship with Eli and the Kid is shown really well, again without lots of
excessive telling, just the way they bounce off each other shows this
developing family.
Jane herself is a complicated character, her balancing of her spirituality and morality with her complex belief system, history and profession is deep and interesting. Even as she hardens after the events of the last few books, she still holds onto her morality and the guilt that clings to her. I love the Her interactions with Beast are excellent and I love that Beast is more than just a raging hungry monster – Beast is maternal, Beast wants kits, Beast can be guaranteed to shred anyone and anything in defence of children.
I loved her reconciliation with Evan because it was all
it should have been – perhaps a little too perfect and pat because of that. But
I loved it, I loved that Jane was sad about what happened but absolutely
refused to take any more blame for shit that wasn’t her fault. In a genre that
is full of heroines nailing themselves to crosses for everything that goes
wrong, it’s refreshing to see Jane standing there saying “yeah, that’s sad –
but it’s not my fault” and rejecting Evan’s blame – AND insisting he own his
own faults. Jane has been beating herself up about Molly for a long time and it
was a relief to finally have this resolved not with Jane being forgiven but
with Jane refusing to be a scapegoat.
The story itself is excellent, it draws upon all the
vampire lore that has been developed over the series and makes it relevant
rather than just backstory. It also
helped really nail down the different kinds of vampires out there and their
relative strengths and weaknesses finally in a defined form. It is a twisty
mystery with more than a few surprises. There are, perhaps, more combat scenes
than are necessary next to balancing exposition, but they’re really well
written so it does work. We have some great side plots that fit well with the
overarching main story including a nice lens into Jane’s own past and
childhood. They aren’t a distraction, not even the old woman deciding to go
vampire hunting – and all really fit together well.
There’s a moment towards the latter end of the middle of
this book that gets a bit flabby for me. I feel like they run around chasing
vampires to kill but don’t really do much investigating or get much in the way
of answers; we just run from one lot of dead spidey vamps to another. It was
also the point when I started to get frustrated because she didn’t seem to be
updating anyone, talking to anyone. Telling anyone that things are far far
different from what she expected or doing any real research beyond setting the
Kid to perform minor miracles. It’s only a brief directionless moment but it’s
there.
My second dislike should probably be better labelled as
love/hate. Jane’s romance. She keeps doing things in the romance that I hate
and then turning round and skewering all those things with challenges. But I do
hate that Jane’s mind is reduced to mush when one of her love interests arrives
on the scene. If Jane were spying on you, I think the easiest way to have a
private conversation would be to mention Bruiser or Ricky then talk quickly
while she inevitably zones out. I hate that Rick is running around attacking
people because they dare to touch Jane and she’s HIS woman because his leopard
believes she’s his mate. His leopard?! Y’know this trope makes no damn sense
when it’s a werewolf doing it, but at least wolves form long term mating bonds.
His leopard’s mate? His solitary leopard that meets a female briefly for quick
sex then disappears again? That leopard is forming jealous mating bonds? And I hate that she’s jealous and angry with
Soul and with a woman Ricky talks to on the phone because there’s another woman
close to her man.
Yet… yet for all the ridiculous leopard mating, Beast is
quite happy to consider both Bruiser and Ricky hers because she’s a Mountain
Lion and she doesn’t mate for life and doesn’t see why she can’t have them
consecutively and why she can’t consider them both hers. Ricky attacks
violently, then realises how out of line he is and even while using his leopard
as an excuse, he apologises. Jane is jealous of Soul but tries to work through
it and fight it because she knows she’s being childish and unfair and wrong and
the two develop a level of communication and respect. She tells the flexing and
posturing Bruiser and Ricky how unromantic jealousy is and Sylvia recognises
her own schoolyard jealousy over Eli and how silly she sounds. So we get all
these annoying tropes – and then every last one challenged.
What I will be looking for next book is not just Jane
breaking the bond with Leo established last book, but some consequences for
that. I feel that this was put on pause this book because she got out of town,
but there’s a missing element of anger towards Leo that worries me. She was
angry with Bruiser, but that was dealt with and it was more sad and betrayed
than enraged. I want to see some rage over what Leo did.
This book has a large number of POC. Jane is, of course,
Native American, Eli and the Kid are mixed- race Black people and we have an
Asian villain. What’s interesting and pretty rare is that the core group –
Jane, Eli and the Kid are all POC (albeit, in the latter cases you have to have
read previous books to realise they are). Also, in a genre that constantly
romanticises the ex-confederacy states, Jane Yellowrock casts a refreshingly
harsh gaze over everything. She doesn’t think “oooh what a romantic antebellum
home” she thinks “old slave era plantation”. She doesn’t marvel at the town
that is long preserved, she remembers what this river port was used for. She
never forgets the history of the ground she’s on – both in terms of slavery and
in terms of the Native American genocide.
I do wish there had been more development of her Cherokee history which has been one of the more wonderful elements of the series and was sad that Agie One-Feather didn’t appear in this book. I was more irritated as well that the one Native American elder that did show up seemed to be a magical guide with extra cryptic woo-woo.
There were no GBLT character sin the book, though some of
the dead villains were posthumously revealed to be lesbians or bisexual women
(we never saw them alive). And for some bizarre reason Eli decided that this is
inappropriate to talk about in front of ladies (personally I think being a
lesbian is, by definition, a female topic. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to
think of any topic that is more female). I think this is supposed to match up
with them all trying not to swear in front of Jane (which isn’t as patronising
as it sounds since Jane has expressed her dislike of swearing) but to count
mentioning 2 women in a relationship as on par with swearing? That kind of treating
GBLT people as taboo is really homophobic. Oh and there was a priest who
learned to be a more tolerant person after driving his lesbian daughter away
never to hear from her again. So no GBLT people, but learning moments of
straight people it seems. We do have plenty of calling out of ridiculous
homophobia, but a glaring lack of GBLT people that sits poorly with the series
record.
We do have a developmentally disabled man, an old school
friend of Jane’s who is interesting. He does have woo-woo and fits many of the
tropes of disabled people with special powers; but at the same time he also has
a level of agency and choice. He helps because he chooses to, when Jane tries
to stop him, he refuses and he himself makes brave decisions to accept pain and
fight to help save his friends. He’ more than just a tool.
In general, this is a good book, perhaps even a great
book. I’m torn between a 3.5 and a 4 on this one, I want to go for a 3.8 or
3.9; there were things I wanted developed more and it there was a slowness in
the middle, but generally this was an excellent book that I had no problem
reading cover to cover. It was a book that, when it ended, I reached out for
the next book and was disappointed that I have another wait ahead of me.
