Shadowed Souls Anthology: Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Tanya Huff, Anton Strout, Kat Richardson, Kevin J Anderson, Lucy A Snyder, Jim C Hines, Erik Scott De Bie, Kathryn Rusch, Rob Thurman

This anthology has a theme – and it’s generally a theme it’s handled quite well. Shadowed Souls are people who do not stand neatly in black and white morality and definitely straddle that uncomfortable grey shadow zone (ooooh title reference).

Firstly we have Cold Case by Jim Butcher with a story from the Dresden Files series. And if anything this is the story that defines the meaning of the book.

I like the exploration of Molly, now one of the younger Winter Queens with all the power and moral ambiguity of the Winter Court. The Winter Court has always been savage and dangerous and vicious – by design. It’s the bulwark against terrible outsider evil, it’s a court that has been built to fight an eternal, brutal war against monsters. The Winter Court is the very essence of dubious morality; of using monsters to fight monsters

I also like the how we go some way to explaining the rather bizarre horniness of the Winter Court. After all, Winter =/= generally mean sexytimes (except in Canada when hockey is cancelled). The bleak idea that Winter fae are super horny because of the war – because of the need to constantly breed because the war inflicts atrocious attrition on them is horrifying, bleak and very much in line with the theme of the court and the book.

So we have Molly, a character we know is a good and ethical and moral now with a whole lot more power and urges she has to learn to control – and having to do some really terrible things and make some really terrible choices for The Greater Good. Which is all the harder because Molly is a child of one of the Knights of the Cross, a man so good he gave literal demons multiple chances to repent. That’s a hard path to follow. We see both the good – upholding her duty to her people – and the terrible, her having to enforce the rules and sacrifices of the Winter court. And it is brutal. I love it

I am less thrilled with HOW Molly’s sexualness is portrayed here. So, yes, the Winter Court is horny, we know this – but in Molly this is interpreted by lots and lots of flirting. Which is fine, flirtiatious and sexually charged female characters are not a problem: but when Harry had the Winter Mantle he wasn’t sexually flirting – his thoughts were creepy and outright pushing for rape. It’s a stark contrast between male and female sexuality – especially when Molly also comes with a celibacy contract. And, yes, the story of sacrifice and suffering inherent to the Winter Court is powerful – but the backstory sets it in dubious light.

We do have a latino mage and several Native American supernaturals who play a decent role in the book

Sleepover by Seanan McGuire

While the opening story defines the theme of the book, I don’t see this book as fitting into the theme. The protagonist is a succubus but not inherently or unduly evil nor forced to make evil choices. She is coerced into a mission – but the mission is to rescue a child. That’s not morally ambiguous. And while we have a definite misunderstanding about why that child went missing, again there’s no real grey area so much as just a complete misunderstanding on the part of the humans as to how these beings work

I do love the whole concept of the world created – so much so that I think this book would be an absolutely awesome lead in to a new series so we could look at the Lilim and the Bogeymen and the culture and societies that are there that people have completely gotten wrong. If this is an excerpt of a longer series, count me in because the introduction of the main character and the world building definitely has me hooked

Also, lesbian protagonist who nods at LGBT cultural milestones without being defined by them – definitely here for this.

Review: Greywalker by Kat Richardson, Book 1 of the Greywalker Series

Harper is a private investigator. Though that sounds a lot more glamorous than it is for the small time Seattle PI. At least until one of her clients tries to kill her and her injuries do cause her to die – at least for a little while. And when she came back, she could see things she never imagined existed.

Now able to see an experience the Grey, she is faced with a world where ghosts, vampires and witches all demand her attention – and her client list has certainly become both more interesting and much much more frightening. Faced with a vampire coup, a lost vampire child trying to find his way in the world without a mentor, and a mysterious client seeking a haunted artefact; Harper has to investigate in ways she never had before – and finds her skills as a detective and a Greywalker in much demand.

Of course, this very much results in her being thrown in at the deep end – and she must learn to swim even while desperately refusing to see the water.

This book was a lot more unique than I imagined – the mystical private detective/cop has, of course been done done and done again – but I’m continually surprised by how much it can be done differently. Harper’s abilities as a Greywalker still remain very much undefined and somewhat ambiguous – at this stage her powers are probably best described as super senses as much as anything else. This makes the mystical much more a focus of Harper’s adaption to the world she’s seeing

And that world is strange indeed. I still have a lot more questions than I have answers and this book has done a great job of introducing a world but not giving too much away – hinting at vast diversity without feeling the need to enumerate every creature and spell. We have vampires and revenants and witches and ghosts all inter-twined in different ways – and even these simple labels rarely encapsulated the full power and variety of each being. We saw at least 3 or 4 vampires that had vastly different abilities and numerous hints to magic and powers for all these forces that point to a lot more to come. To say nothing of the vast and complex nature of the Grey as well. Is it completely unique? No, but there’s a lot of fascinating twists on old concepts here.

While the plot starts slow it quickly interweaves 2-3 mysteries together. I was actually irritated that we had too much going on competing with each other, but then they came together to be connected and feed off one another. It was nicely done, just as I was getting lost and irritated, we then had one storyline fed by all three tributaries. I liked it, I was impressed, it was a great piece of writing.

Characterwise, Harper has a lot of competence. But I wouldn’t say she’s an overly amusing character and I found it really hard to like her or to identify by her. She isn’t hugely funny and she, naturally, spends a lot of this book being emotionally wrung out by the revelations of the Grey and the events of the book draining her. Very natural – but it mean she spends a lot lot lot of the book telling us how terrible she’s feeling, how sad/tired/aching/overwhelmed she is etc. I don’t want to say the character spent all her time whining, because she had good reason not to be happy… but, yes, there was a the character being unhappy and letting us know. This, coupled with her shock and denial (both natural) also make her acerbic, sometimes unnecessarily so, to people around her, including people who don’t really deserve it. In fact, sometimes she’s downright unjustifiably harsh. She doesn’t make any really ridiculous decisions in a Spunky Agency sense, albeit her motives are a little questionable at times. She’s independent, wilful, determined and driven… but, well, she was more effective than identifiable.