Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) by Tracey Sinclair

Cassandra Bick runs a supernatural dating agency and between her business, her relationship with both a grounded Angel (Cain) and one of the most powerful vampires in London (Laclos), you would think that this makes Cassandra an old hat at dealing with supernatural problems but you'd be wrong. When a fledgling enters her office issuing a threat to Laclos's safety because quite uncharacteristically, he has gone on a slaughtering spree thanks to ingesting Cain's blood, Cassandra cannot overlook the threat, no matter how much she would like to.  With a vampire war looming, Cassandra has a lot to deal with and it's all made worse with the arrival of Cain's wife and the angels who have determined that Cain broke the law when he shared blood with Laclos.

Despite everything that she has been through, Cassie hasn't really grown as a person.  Cassie feels driven to size up the women she interacts with as some competition. Cassie has to break down what her so-called competition is wearing and how it all rates against what she has or can afford, making her internal monologue irritating at times. It's almost a relief when she's told to give it a rest, considering that both Laclos and Cain the two supernaturals who are arguably the most attractive in the city have been battling over her. With everything that's happening in Angel Falls, Cassie's continual competition with the women around her is absolutely tedious to read and made we want to scream just grow up already.  On a positive note, she's still willing to do what she had to do to survive and to take care of the little supernatural family she has managed to assemble.

Cassie's little supernatural family has grown even tighter in Angel Falls. We were introduced to another mortal who owes a favor to Cain and the Valkyrie, Cain's wife returned for the big battle.  Everyone has competing motivations but they all manage to work together to save Laclos.  I love that Medea will now be a full partner in Dark Dates because this further elevates her status.  I want to see these characters continue to grow and become the ultimate Scooby team. I found myself particularly drawn to the changing relationship between Cain and Laclos.  Laclos has experienced many changes after drinking Cain's blood and at times we are told that it has created a profound bond (yes, a Supernatural reference) but Sinclair works hard to show that the bond is more than supernatural and that these men have developed a history which results in a certain amount of regard.

By about the third book, I normally feel as though I have sense about the world but Sinclair showed me exactly how much I had assumed about the Cassandra Bick Chronicles by the ways she expanded the world and added so much nuance to her characters. Until Angel Falls, though we knew that angels existed and are powerful beings, we knew very little about them. We learned that Angels don't conform to modernist models of gender identity and that once they love someone, they love forever. I must admit to finding this fascinating.   The angels touch upon LGBT themes and are a notable parallel between genderqueer/non-binary/genderfluid people. That being said, it's not entirely inaccurate to include Cain as one of them; however, as a member of a species that can ALL change body/shape/gender/sex at will and generally as an alien being, the analogy isn't perfect and there are marked differences between this angel's experience/representation and a genderqueer/fluid/trans human's experience etc.

Wolf Night (Cassandra Bick Chronicles #2) by Tracey Sinclair

Things have sort of briefly stabilized for Cassandra.  Though she is sad that Cain has once again taken off, Laclos' investment in her business has allowed her to keep running Dark Dates and arranging parties for humans and vampires to meet.  Then Medea her assistant and Wiccan friend breaks some very exciting news - she's proposed to her girlfriend Kate and they are going to get married. Having no friends and her parents long dead, Kate and Medea have become defacto family.  Though Medea insists on wanting a small ceremony, Cassie decides that they must simply have a hen night, which leads to her inadvertently breaking a very important spell cast by Medea.  It's not long before Cassandra is fending off, werewolves and wiccans. If that were not bad enough, Cane returns to town the same day that Cassandra finally sleeps with Lacolos, the two thousand year old vampire.  Then, proving that bad things happens in threes, her ex boyfriend Sebastian shows up.

Though there was a lot going on in Wolf Night, it got off to a really slow start. This surprised me but by the middle of the book, it really took off.  It further didn't help that the ending was all tell and not show.  I thought having the bad guy explain his motivation and confess his misdeeds went out with Perry Mason.  It's not an artful approach and reads like and info dump because of an inability to wrap up loose ends.

The protagonist Cassandra, who is still terribly insecure became a major issue for me in terms of enjoying Wolf Night and I found myself reading for the ancillary characters, rather than her. Women essentially exist to be competition and remind Cassandra that she is not good enough and this even includes her best friend Medea.

 OK, so  it wasn’t just the vampires who could make me feel frumpy. If she wasn’t great at her job,  really very nice, pretty much my only friend and one of the people who helped me save a city  less than a year ago, I might’ve had to hate her.  Medea’s magical mojo aside, the rest of the humans were pure vanilla (pg3)

Tall  and  blonde,  she  looked  like  the  term  ‘ethereal’  had  been  coined  for  her:  think  Cate  Blanchett  in   Lord  of  the  Rings,  without  the  pointy  ears.  Her  outfit  was  very  Wicca-chic  – a  long,  loose  skirt  that  flowed  around  her  slender frame, and a floaty, scoop necked top revealing clavicles you could slice your hands  on. Was it my fate to be surrounded by  women  who made me feel like a dishevelled hag?  Maybe all Wiccans used the same spell.  Clearly she was used to the effect she had on people, because she didn’t look remotely  discombobulated  by  the  fact  it  took  me  a  good  couple  of  minutes  to  stop  staring  and  pull  myself together enough to speak. (pg 34)

The second quote is in reference to a former lover of Madea's.  As you might imagine, this gets tiresome quickly.  There has to be something in between the protagonist who is drop dead gorgeous, and doesn't even try and the one (in this case Cassandra) who has such low self esteem that she is in the shadow of every single woman she meets.  In this case, this sort of self loathing is particularly unrealistic, as Cassandra is actively being pursued by an angel and a two thousand year old vampire.  I can only hope that by the time the third book in this series comes out that Cassandra will leave this annoying tendency behind.

The one thing Cassandra is certain about is what she will and will not accept in a relationship.  The infamous handbag makes it appearance when Laclos decides to bite Cassandra without her permission.  She makes it absolutely clear that he is never ever to bite her without asking.  Laclos believed that because she had said yes once that it gave him tacit permission to feed from her at will.  He pulled out the typical vampire line of being able to sense her arousal but Cassandra was absolutely adamant that consent is something that needs to be sought each and every time.  I think that this is an extremely important message because enthusiastic consent is something that is so necessary to push because of the pervasiveness of rape culture.

A Vampire Christmas by Tracey Sinclair:A Dark Dates Short Story The Cassandra Bick Chronicles

 

If you haven't read Dark Dates yet, (something you need to rectify right now)  this short story does contain some spoilers.  It's Christmas time in London and Cassandra is feeling down.  Christmas is a time of celebration and family but when your parents are dead and all of your friends died when you were in college, it's not hard to get a little bit depressed.  Her lover Cain is off doing his things and that leaves the vampire Laclos to attempt to gain her attentions. He is most certainly not above bringing his own mistletoe to secure a Christmas gift.

Wanting to give back to the community, Cassandra has decided to maintain her yearly ritual of working at a shelter.  Things go fine until a drunk man is denied entrance after claiming that a vampire ate his friends. Of course the workers at the shelter see Billy as just another one who has lost his way and give his tale little credence but Cassandra, with her ability to sense the supernatural is sure that Billy is telling the truth.  Determined to get to the bottom of what is going on, Cassandra enlists the help of  Medea and Katie.  Is there a rogue vampire preying on the population of London and if so, can Cassandra bring this to a stop without further endangering herself, her friends or her business? 

I kind of love that Laclos is one big walking vampire stereotype.  Seriously, a vampire who wears glitter, how can you not giggle at that?   Sinclair has once again filled her story with plenty of pop culture references and though Cassandra declares that she and her friends are not like Buffy and the scoobies the warmth and the budding relationship is clear to see.  I look forward to seeing how the relationship between Madea, Katie and Cassandra goes.  Clearly, Madea has moved from being an employ to someone Cassandra can count on.

A Vampire Walks Into A Bar by Tracey Sinclair A Dark Dates short story The Cassandra Bick Chronicles

A Vampire Walks Into A Bar, takes place after the end of Dark Dates. Unlike Dark Dates, this short story essentially focuses on an interaction between Laclos the vampire and Cain the earthbound angel. Cain is sitting in a bar trying to drown his sorrows after having been given the boot by Cassandra when Laclos walks in with a problem. It seems that there is a new hunter in London and of course, he is fixated on Cassandra. Can these two men get along enough to ascertain whether there is a real threat and, if so, deal with it?

We got to learn a little bit more about Cain's background in this short story. Learning that he was once crucified does much to explain exactly how painful his past is. Sinclair also explained why it is that Cain remains so out of touch with modern times unlike Laclos. It makes sense that changing human morality, conventions and names would have little effect on him and it helps to make him an even more fascinating character.

Despite strong references as to why homophobia is wrong, I felt that there was a lot of homophobia in this book.  Laclos is bisexual and is well aware that Cain is not in the least bit interested in him, yet he touches him inappropriately and Lacolos' speech is constantly littered with inappropriate sexual innuendos.

Review: Dark Dates, Book One of the Cassandra Bick Chronicles, by Tracey Sinclair

 

Cassandra is a human sensitive who knows when someone around her is not human.  She can sense the evil in them and the power.  At first her parents saw her as a precocious child but in her teenage years, when the sense became debilitating, she was approached by an earth bound angel named Cain, who tells her that what she has is truly a gift. He disappears from her life for years, only to reappear the night that her two best friends are killed, to drag her from a burning house.  Cain seeks vengeance in Cassandra's name and this separates them again for a few years.

Cassandra could have chosen to hate anything that wasn't human or otherwordly after suffering such a loss, but instead decides to view each person as an individual and so she sets up dark dates - a service which introduces humans and vampires.  Cassandra is happy and comfortable in her life, though she has been unable to re-create any friendships since the horrible day that her best friends died.  The closest she has come is Madea, her Indian and Scottish Wiccan assistant. Though they spend everyday together, once it's quitting time, they go their separate ways.

When Cain blows back into town telling her that something bad is happening and mysterious deaths are appearing in the newspaper, she refuses to leave town because she cannot afford to allow her business to flounder and has to live on a tight budget to make her mortgage payments. A mysterious vampire visits her place of business and threatens her but Cassandra still won't leave.  When her office is broken into and her files stolen, Laclos the head vampire in London demands that she find out who is doing this because all of the young vampires are now being killed thanks to the information in her files.  Demons begin attacking and though the mysterious Cain has promised to help, he never seems to be around when she needs saving.  To make matters worse, when she finally uses her sense on Cain, she learns that not only is he not human but that he is an angel.  Can Cassandra find who is killing off the vampires in London before they kill her or ruin her way of life forever?

Okay, I have to say that Sinclair has turned me into an out and out fanpoodle.  I stayed up late reading this book because I simply could not put it down.  Even as I write this, my heart is screaming don't critcise the precious, must protect the precious.  One of the things that I loved about this book was the inclusion.  Too often in urban fantasy, having a diverse supernatural world is used to cover the fact that there is little real inclusion going on but in Dark Dates, Sinclair managed to have a diverse supernatural and human cast that read as largely authentic.  

Madea and her shifter girlfriend Kate clearly have a loving relationship.  Though they help Cassandra fight evil, they make it clear that they are doing so only because they have a stake in what is going on, rather than a need to have Cassandra's back. It would have been so easy to have them become sidekicks and servants but Sinclair skillfully avoids this.  Even when Kate examines Cassandra for physical damage, she does it clinically without becoming overwrought.

In terms of GLBT inclusion there is also the bisexual Laclos.  Unlike the relationship between Kate and Madea, when this is revealed it is in a predatory manner.  When Laclos meets Cain for the first time, he is overcome with attraction and forces himself on Cain. He suggests that because Cain is centuries old that he should be open to sex between the two of them, though Cain is obviously not interested.  Laclos touches Cain sexually without permission. 

Laclos leaned in and kissed Cain full on the mouth, his eyes closing as his lips touched Cain's, his hand closing into a fist, Cain's t-shirt clenched within it.  The kiss only went on for seconds, but it felt like a very very long tme, and when Laclos pulled back his expression was transformed.  He looked almost stunned - sated and starving all at the same time, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. (page 195)

Cain has to physically threaten Laclos to get him to stop assaulting him. Cassandra of course is sexually turned on watching this, making this passage read like a cheap m/m slasher book.  If that were not enough, her jealousy kicks in because Laclos is no longer devoting his sexual desires to her and is instead fixated on Cain.  How dare he forget that she is in the room for even a single moment. This scene is a problem because it plays upon the mythos of the sexually predatory male who is attracted to the same sex, though Cain's power is used as justification for Lycalos' actions.