Blood Sport (American Arcane #2) by Justen Hunter

Eric, possibly the last witch in the world, has been promoted to the knight of the Bay. It’s his job to police the supernaturals of San Francisco and solve any problems that arise – it’s a new role for him and he’s definitely still finding his feet.

But vampires are dying – dying in ways that scream of black magic. Which means there’s a magical practitioner in town other than Eric, one who is working with demons and maybe neck deep in lethal vampire politics

Eric faces another very steep learning curve.

I like Eric on many levels. I like that he’s a protagonist who doesn’t fall back to violence as a problem solver. I like that his first stop is reason and trying to make people co-operate. I also like that his power doesn’t really lend itself to violence – sure it’s growing and increasing, but ultimately he is surrounded by people (by women, no less, who are considerably more violently powerful than him). His magic is more useful than dangerous. He carries a gun but is no marksman, he has some magical tricks but they’re costly and difficult and even Serena, his new sidekick, comments on how bad he is at fighting. He is a normal guy discovering a new world and new abilities and, no, that doesn’t come with the full skill set to cope with that

What I’m not fan of is his naivety. He doesn’t see any problem with telling all the vulnerabilities of supernaturals to the police even as Teresa protests (which has an extra level of dubious when you consider that Eric is a straight white guy and Teresa is a POC woman who is asking him to be more careful about the police), sure that the police are the good guys and there’s nothing that could go wrong. He tells the whole world that he is a witch – seriously, because of him just about everyone now thinks witches are about and he is a witch when before him everyone thought witches were extinct – again in the face of endless warnings. He trusts Amy implicitly and, yes he certainly has reason for that, but he still knows nothing about her, what she is, her history or even her last name. Worse, he trusts Nick and is even willing to go with him to another world, merely because the guy said it was important and with a similar lack of information.

It’s not even his naivety, per se. A naïve character who wakes up to the reality of the world isn’t a bad thing. But he doesn’t. His trust never comes back to bite him in the arse, his trust is never unfounded, his rose tinted glasses are not really pulled away. It’s almost stretching my plausibility meters – like Serena. Serena has a lot of potential to be a good character, I’m curious how she develops. But “develops” is the word. He shouldn’t be taking a brand new vampire and a complete stranger to crime scenes and deputising her as his chief assistant. How can he trust her with all this information, he’s known her for a few hours?! This should blow up in his face. Someone should protest – but no-one does. It’s a form of very clumsy plot armour.

West Coast Witch (American Arcane #1) by Justen Hunter

Eric’s life was pretty simple – he had his job as a bar tender and his books.

Until a vampire attacks him and an ex girlfriend of his goes missing and he meets Amy who introduces herself as his Guardian because of a pact with his family. Now he’s up to his eyeballs in vampire politics, werewolf gangs and so much more than he ever dreamed of

Above all the fact that he has magic – he’s a witch, one of the few left in the world, and a challenge, asset and threat to the other Arcane of San Francisco.

This is the first novel of a new series – which means as much as it is about telling a story it’s also about introducing a world and cast to convince us that we want to play in it – and I think this book has done a pretty decent job all round, albeit perhaps not a stellar job

The world is a good one – but not an especially original one. We have vampires in all their ancientness and werewolves in all their furriness with assorted shapeshifters around the periphery for funness. The characters themselves are interesting (the werewolf mob boss, the vampire club owner) and it’s all presented well with bonus extras that we don’t see a lot elsewhere – the undefined Guardians and the hinted at Red Angels with extra mystery brought by the fae

I think when these are developed – along with the whole near-extinction of the witches and their nature – have potential to throw in lots of new angles. I also think it’s probably a good idea not to overdevelop them at this stage so the book can spend more time focusing on introducing Eric, the protagonist. This means the world is decent, fun, interesting and also very very very very similar to a lot of worlds out there. That’s not inherently a bad thing – I liked those books, I like big worlds full of the supernatural, but until these extra elements are developed there’s little in the world to make it stand out in the genre.

The primary role of this book is to set up Eric, the protagonist – and I have mixed feelings about him

Eric has lived nearly his entire life without any real familiarity of the supernatural. Sure he’s aware that vampires and werewolves exist along with the rest of the population since they’ve recently had a Masquerade breaking a few years ago, but otherwise he’s quite clueless. Yet he doesn’t let that stop him leaping into the supernatural world head first without much in the way of hesitation. He often steps in things completely against the advice of his friend/mentor/guardian/totally-not-an-angel. He’s reckless, he’s foolish and if he weren’t the protagonist with a truly epic level of plot armour, he would be dead several times over.

I don’t know what frustrates me more, the lack of good decision making or the fact that his decisions nearly always work without any real consequences

Eric also trusts extremely easily – like Amy. Sure she saved his life but she won’t even tell him her last name, what exactly she is, what her relationship with his mother or his family is but has already declared herself to be his guardian and follows him around. And if he does trust her so much could he at least trust her enough to listen to her advice?! Like she tells him it’s very important he not let the world know he’s a witch and I don’t think the echoes of her warning have died before he’s told half of San Francisco.

He’s so blasé and careless – he falls in with the vampires (after going to see them. Alone. Against all advice. And still not getting eaten) and even starts dating Teresa - again against advice and just a few short days after being attacked by a vampire and describing the whole experience as traumatic and violating. In fact, Eric’s life changes a lot very quickly and becomes a lot more violent and messy but he rolls with it incredibly easily. Now, I’m no fan of drawn out angst, reading my past reviews will make that clear – but some reflection or pause would have helped a lot here.