Review of Torn By Julie Kenner, Book 2 of The Blood Lily Chronicles

 

Coming in at 188 pages, Torn is a very short book that somehow still manages to feel extremely long.  When we last left Lily, she had discovered that rather than working on the side of the good, she had actually been tricked into opening the 9th gate.   If that were the only problem with being fooled that would be bad enough, but her sister Rose's body has been invaded by a demon.  Johnson makes it clear that he the price of Rose's freedom is the Oris Clef - the key which throws open all of the gates to hell.  Unfortunately another demon faction also wants the key.  Deacon Camphire the demon who Lily feels inextricably attracted to wants her to abandon the search for the Oris Clef in favour of finding the one key that will lock all the doors. At stake for him, is the possibility of redemption. 

The only thing Lily knows for sure is that she must find a way to save Rose.  This is her mantra repeatedly and yet she seems to be quite willing to palm Rose off on others.  She feels the urge to hunt a demon, she dumps Rose. She has a mission to go on to retrieve part of the key, she dumps Rose.  It's easy to see why Deacon could suggest that maybe Rose is disposable after all. 

Lily moves from one location to another attempting to gather the pieces of the key but the archangel Gabriel is stalker her.  At first, she assumes that he is a demon because of the tattoos on his face but Deacon explains that he is heaven's warrior.  Can Lily save her sister, and stop the gates from being opened -does she even want to?

In the first book of this series, there was a lot of world building that was absent in this story.  Unfortunately, without this world building, all that is challenging about this story is erased.  One of the prominent challenges in was classism.  Though the story itself was not original, I enjoyed the fact that Kenner went of her way to detail how one's class location greatly effects one's life chances.  Considerin that this story is extremely erased - no characters of colour, no disabled and no GLBT characters the focus on class at least added a real world element. It was further intriguing because class based issues are something that rarely gets discussing in this genre, making it one of the best things about Tainted.  When Kenner stopped discussing class, she effectively got rid of the best thing about this series.  Now there is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from all of the other books in this genre.

Review of Tainted by Julie Kenner Book 1 of The Blood Lily Chronicles

Lily Carlyle has had a very hard life.  Her mother died when she was only 14 years old, leaving her with a little sister to take care of and a drunken stepfather who quickly became to lost in his grief to be of any real help.  Lily made a promise to her little sister Rose that she would always keep her safe and if this meant lying, cheating and stealing to pay the bills, then so be it.  When Rose is raped and her attacker is released on a legal technicality, he begins stalking her.  Lily remembers her promise to protect her sister, and if that means committing murder to ensure that Rose is safe, then she is more than willing to do it.

What Lily does not count on, is that her act of vengeance will lead to her death. Lily dies knowing that with all of her past actions, that there is only one final destination for her - hell.  Lily is however offered a chance of redemption, when she is placed into the body of Alice Purdue and told that she is the girl who is prophesied to ensure that the demons amassing at the ninth gate are never able to escape.  She says yes to this challenge, because the alternative is an eternity of damnation, and so with the help of  Clarence and her fighting coach, an incubus named Zane, Lilly/Alice sets out to save the world and in the process keep her promise to her little sister.

As with all plans, things don't run smooth for Lily.  Each time she kills a demon, she takes on their essence and this means that she inherits all of the dark passions, crimes and urges.  Lily is terrified that she is becoming that which she is seeking to eradicate.

With Armageddon looming, Lily also find herself deeply attracted to a demon named Deacon.  It appears that Deacon and Alice had some sort of arrangement and he quickly surmises that though Lily now looks like Alice, something is very wrong.  There is an extremely strong attraction between the two of them, which Lily has great difficulty reconciling.  How is it possible that the chosen one - a demon killer, can be attracted to a demon?  Is it possible that things are not as black and white as she has been told?  Do demons possess the ability to be an agent of good?