Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus #4) by James A. Hunter

Yancy carries the Seal if the Horseman of War. His mind is being colonised by the demon Azazel and it’s a battle he’s losing

It would help if he could stop drawing on the dark power the demon offers. But with the world in the balance and another seal possibly falling into the hands of their enemies, he seems to have no choice. As he drags himself through horrendous, torturous experience after another, faces agony and horror and watches the Guild of the Staff completely collapse around him – can he really say no to the demon’s magic?

But if he accepts the demon’s help, does he risk being a greater threat than the very thing he’s fighting against?

The ongoing meta plot of this series now goes into high gear as the seals of the apocalypse and the archdemons who guard them are now front and centre to the storyline. We don’t just have Yancy stumbling across a situation that happens to be related to the epic ongoing battle on which the world rests.

This feels much more directed because of this, the grand fate of the end of the world and the consequences there are much more central. Even though that has been on the cards for a while, the last book felt more local, focusing on the Big Foot (big feet?) rather than the very world being in the balance. We definitely have the broader focus here. Along with all the epic conflict and fight scenes I expect from a Yancy Lazerous novel.

Perhaps because it is so focused, I don’t feel like this book is jammed with unnecessary fight scenes – not because there are less of them, but more because each fight as actually relevant to the overall plot line. In previous books if Yancy went to a bar, asked someone for information, pretty much anything, there would be a battle. I think one of the problems I have in taking Fast Hands Steve seriously as an epic enemy (beyond the awful name) is that he was introduced in a completely random unnecessary fight. Building a whole vendetta enemy out of a fight in a bar because Yancy can’t even play music without there being conflict going on really fails as a back story. Sometimes I feel Yancy eats BBQ in restaurants all the time because he can’t go to the shops to buy groceries without fighting ninjas, demons, and vampiric girl scouts.

Here all the action was on point

There’s also some devastatingly dramatic tension with Yancy confronting Fotuna after the horrendous things he suffers in this book. It doesn’t downplay or minimise the trauma nor expect Yancy to just breeze past it – it’s devastating and presented as such.

I also like Darlene

When we first met Darlene and Yancy dismisses her as an office worker way out of her depth, I waited for him to be proven gloriously wrong. I waited for this to be proven wrong. I waited for her to pull out some ninja magical nuclear powers and leave Yancy gasping at her violent awesomeness.

And I was wrong. She was out of her depth. She absolutely fell apart in a combat situation and generally Yancy’s first impressed was confirmed in spades

This isn’t a bad thing. Why wouldn’t a fully experienced combat veteran like Yancy NOT recognise someone with combat training. Plus waif-fu – or awesome fighting power houses who don’t remotely look the part – is an annoying trope that is kind of elated to the super-hot-thin-people-eating-fried-chicken-covered-pizzas-and-not-exercising trope. Actually being an active, experienced combat fighter generally comes with a level of physical fitness and muscle tone. And that’s aside from demeanour, grim bitterness etc – there’s every reason why Yancy should have been able to accurately peg Darlene

On top of that, Darlene isn’t terrible. I mean it would be tempted to shame her, hate her, demean her or otherwise reduce her because she isn’t a fighter. But she isn’t. Her skills, her administration and her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Guild’s procedures, reports and previous events is an asset and in the end definitely gives her some extremely useful input to saving the day

I like this. I like that Darlene can be capable, useful, respected member of the team without being a combat monster. While being, yes, a soccer mum. Especially since we still have Ferraldo who is, as I’ve mentioned in several previous books, a definite, skilled, dangerous combatant and tactician. We see two female characters, both adding awesome strength to the plot in very different ways.

We do have some very dubious elements that come with the world building. This is something similar to what Supernatural faced: when you have a world setting which moooshes all kinds of mythologies together, there’s a lot of dubious tropes you can follow, along with things like colonising, appropriating and generally raiding other cultures and belief systems which are all issues we’ve covered before. This book takes those issues and then sets up, the White King, a pretty blatant Judeo-Christian mythology god, as basically above them all. We have an excellent story of Indian naga and Buddhism which seems nicely done – and then jumps into this with angelic intervention and a seal of the apocalypse. We have this whole Buddhist based legend and story and just stuck in a quick “subordinate to Christianity” in there. Aside from this then ending up as part of the story lead by Fortuna and the Fates, again, restricted and controlled by the White King. Similarly when the gang travel to Haiti we have the Loa treated the same way – with Baron Samedi being pretty much completely erased as a loa and replaced by one of the seal bearers.

Which adds into the ongoing trouble of the whole Haitian and Voodoo depiction in the genre and in media in general (and in general societal awareness for that matter). Voodoo is constantly portrayed as evil, dark awful darkness with whole lots of racist undertones and exotic/savage otherness.  And in this book? Baron Samedi is literally a demonic horseman of the apocalypse. Voodoo is all about zombies, mind control, torture, gangs, child soldiers and death. All of it – there’s no counter example at all. More, the whole power of voodoo which the mage council doesn’t understand? That’s Nox. The special demonic power which is the very antithesis of

And Haiti? This is set in Cite de Soleil, a shanty town in Haiti, that is presented as basically a lawless giant violent hell slum of child soldiers, voodoo warlords, torture and awfulness.

Look, Cite de Soleil is a terrible place, it’s on record of one of the most dangerous places. And no, I’m not saying that Haiti should be presented as wonderfully wealth and prosperous and stable without gangs and crime. No, you don’t have to present Haiti has a utopia, or Voudoun as this perfectly serene religion whose followers are all enlightened saintly people.

The there’s no counter-narrative here. Everything about Haiti, voodoo and Haitians here is presented as evil, dark, horrific and generally awful. Also with absolutely no inclusion of the very relevant history behind Haitians history here. No, I’m not expecting Yancy to give us a nice historical recap of Haiti being the first (and only?) nation founded by rebelling slaves or the crippling, punishing debt that was then imposed on it by the international community in response. However, I also don’t condone a book to take a country, culture, people and religion and turning them basically into a hell-scape for Yancy to run around killing things in. You could literally have turned his entire time in Haiti into some hell-realm controlled by goblins and made no real change to the plot because nothing about this depiction acknowledge or treated Haiti as an actual place or tried to treat any Haitian as an actual person

Also I’m going to sideswipe here at the naga Buddhist monk who was basically serene and peaceful in between dishing out kung fu and, really, really? Y’know I said that it was excellently done to incorporate Buddhism into this story was nicely done? Well it would be nicer if the depiction of the one actual Buddhist person wasn’t cribbed from a 1980s kung fu movie.

This is pretty much the POC in this book – we have some other side POC who are part of the guild, but they’re not exactly major players or hugely influential on the book or plot line which does nothing to counter this… We continue to have no LGBT characters.

This series continues to have a lot of awesome moments, a lot of epic battles and an excellent meta plot. I think this book has all of that in excellent, amazing degree – but it also has a really terrible diversity problem that is, if anything, only exacerbated by it drawing so heavily on different cultures and mythologies

Wendigo Rising (Yancy Lazarus #3) by James A Hunter

Yancy continues to want very little from life. Ribs, whiskey, gambling and a drifter’s life. But he’s been dragged into an epic secret conflict no man with a conscience could walk away from

He also cannot walk away from angry Big Feet who need his help. Mainly because they’re super fast and willing to wreck his car and his skull to make him co-operate

Despite a less than auspicious introduction, Yancy finds that the same insidious evil he has been hunting has its tentacles here as well – and the future of more than the Big Feet rest in the balance.

We know the pattern of a series like this. With every book, the current plot will feed into the greater meta plot, we will have epic confrontations each feeding into more epic confrontations to come. Great powers will be raised, will be fought and our heroes will emerge bloodied and not entirely victorious – but they will have pushed back the dark for now and emerged a little stronger, a little more powerful, and, yes a little more epic than they were before

It’s a pattern I’ve seen repeated numerous times – and gods do I love it. I really really do – so long as you can walk that shining line between the epic and the Gary Stu/Mary Sue. So long as the plot is more than just a slug fest (which this series doesn’t do that well with) and so long as the world is one epic playground in which all the awesome can be displayed – which this book certainly does do.

We have an epic world, an ever more epic conflict, lots of blood-fizzing fight scenes all with a decidedly noir bent that it actually pulls off at least 80% of the time (hey, a well maintained Noir is a wonderful and rare thing to find – but usually they try too hard). Yancy manages to be just a bit too unlikeable (there’s the gruff rogue antihero and the outright arsehole and he flirts along that line just a bit too much), but in all, all the ingredients I love are right there and this series has gone from one I was relatively indifferent about to one I will be following to the bitter end.

It also has sufficient quirks to make it special as well – I kind of love Lady Luck, the entire concept of her, her influence that always helps so very much – but not nearly as much as you’d like. Because of course, she’s bound by rules. And equally of course, she breaks them. She is Lady Luck after all. Or maybe not break, but there’s a lady who likes her loopholes

On the third book in the series I find myself with the same old problem. I like the action. The action is good. The action is interesting. That action is well paced and well written and exciting and you can see all these epic fights raging across the book. They’re really really really well done and these action scenes dropped in any other book would be so very awesome in any other book

But not in this one because, again, there are just too many. Over and over and over we have fight scenes. We have struggles. And sometimes just wonder why is everything so hard? I mean the whole opening scene where Yancy meets the Chiye-tanke we have a battle. We have a long, unnecessary fight scene between Yancy and his upcoming allies and… why? Whyyyyy? And even if there was an initial misunderstanding why did we have to go full on war zone? Why is Chief Chankoowashtay the leader of his people and this incapable of communicating coherently and sensibly with people? And why in the name of all that is sensible does Yancy have to smart mouth his way through every encounter trying to provoke a fight ALL the times. We’ve said it before in relations to a lot of oh-so-strong female protagonists and it equally applies here: your character is not tougher or stronger because they can’t stop wise cracking and disrespecting everyone around them. It’s tiresome, it’s annoying, it slows down the plot and it makes me kind of dislike Yancy.

The only redeeming element of all this is Ferraro, who is awesome in so many ways. And one of the things she does so well is constantly call out Yancy for his bullshit. When he is wallowing in angst and moping, Ferraldo is there to say he is pouting and acting like an utter manchild. She is there to slap him down for abandoning her, for centring his emotion, for constantly snarling and snapping at other people, for moping. Ferraldo is repeatedly there not to coddle his precious sadness or anger or issues, she is there to drag him out and make sure he gets through it. That’s not to say she’s unfeeling, she can and often is highly sympathetic

Codex Born (Magic Ex Libris #2) by Jim C Hines

Isaac, Lena and Nidhi are developing their new relationship – but hardly have the chance to do so on peace before being called into the field again.

There’s been some murdered Wendigo – and Wendigo are pretty hard to kill.

But throw in some strange, lethal metal insects, creations of a dead Libriomancer and his far less fun father.

An ancient order of Chinese mages who have a severe beef with Gutenburg’s followers – and made extra uncomfortable by them maybe being right

Then throw in the Devourers, dryads and a dragon and there’s certainly a lot to handle; all confused further by Gutenburg’s secrets and that nagging question as to whether or not they’re actually on the right side.

I love the very concept of this world. The idea of pulling things out of books – and now e-readers – and both the wonder and the complexity that can come with that. I love the geeky shout outs to so many books I’ve read and loved. I love just how much the love of reading and the power of it and this genre which we adore so much is all just worshipped in this series.

And things have got complicated – wonderfully, gloriously complicated.  We have an enemy – who everyone hates, even his allies and rightly so. Then we have an enemy who Isaac kind of feels sympathetic towards with lots of recognition of past injustice. Then we have Gutenburg who may be their ally and super powerful and he may have some extremely good reasons for his decisions – but he’s still done a whole lot of evil, he’s still keeping a whole lot of secrets and Isaac still doesn’t trust, despite working for him. And under all that you have the big nasty monsters that may try to eat everyone.

It’s wonderfully complex.

And part of that complexity is the complexity of the characters (while still giving us someone who is evil and we can hate without having to be complicated about it – because that’s fun too). The entire history of the Libriomancers is a fascinating one that’s been really well developed. I love the dispensing of the idea that Gutenburg is the first Libriomancer – the Chinese have been printing long before him and already had their own variety. At first it seemed like a simple case of Gutenburg attacking, slaughtering and stealing from the Students of Bi Sheng. But then lots of nuance get added:

Are we judging someone based on what they did 500 years ago? With attitudes, standards and thought processes that were prevalent at the time?

Broken Homes (Rivers of London #4) by Ben Aaronovitch

Peter and Lesley are still trying to track down the Faceless Man and his erstwhile pupils; it’s a long, tedious task only achievable by dogged police work.

Of course, the understaffed magical police force has plenty of other things to drag their attention – an ancient magical book that a thief tried to sell, a man committing a very suspicious suicide, people being microwaved, a Russian military trained witch and the gods and goddesses of the Thames demanding their attention. And some of it is definitely linked to a bemusing tower block that doesn’t quite make sense

There’s a lot to handle – and the Faceless Man’s influence is definitely behind some of it – but which and why?

Nightingale insists the Faceless man is no Moriarty – but he may be wrong on this one

When a copy of this book was pushed through my door on Friday evening, I opened it then cleared my desk, dropped my e-reader and turned off my phone. There would be no interruptions. When the sun rose Saturday morning, I had finished reading it – and could finally allow myself to sleep

It’s an excellent sign of a good book – does it rob me of sleep? Can I read all 357 pages of it without any breaks? And, particularly, can I read it in one setting and not even take a break to get coffee? The answer to all is yes, I love this book more than coffee.

There’s so much about this book I love. I love its realness – which sounds strange about a book that is about the supernatural, but it’s true. I love the sense of London you get from every page, the very real place that it conjures, the actual real place that it relates to. You can feel London – and intimate knowledge of London - on every page. I can’t undersell how powerful the setting is.

But the realness doesn’t just stop at the city, there’s also a lot of research that has gone into Peter’s job as a policeman. The procedures, the bodies he deals with, the hoops he has to jump through. His wry views of both the public through a policeman’s eyes and the same wry criticism of the police’s own failings both historic and present (especially as a Black man who grew up in a poor neighbourhood). When so many crime stories have magical forensics, impossibly fast deductions, so little actual investigation and police work and such a very fast and loose approach to what the law actually means, it’s so excellent that this Urban Fantasy book has a more realistic presentation of police work than any number of crime dramas. My personal favourite was replacing the jurisdictional battles (“it’s my case! How dare you steal my case!”) with police forces trying to push cases on each other because they can see how much budget it’s going to eat up.

Giveaway of Kept by Shawntelle Madison Book 2 of Coveted Series

Hey everyone, it's time for a new and exciting giveaway. This time we are giving away Kept by Shawntelle Madison, book number 2 of the Coveted series.

Fresh from defending her pack in battle, Natalya Stravinsky, a whip-smart werewolf with a lovable neurotic streak, wants a little rest and relaxation. Once an outcast, she’s now eager to rejoin the ranks of her New Jersey pack, and has even gotten a handle on her obsessive urge to hoard holiday ornaments. Yet Nat barely has time to revel in her progress before the next crisis comes howling at her door.

Nat’s father has suddenly gone missing, captured by the Russian werewolf mafia. And as Nat steps up to save her dad from a mob boss’s deadly game, two men step in to play another round for her heart: her gorgeous alpha ex-boyfriend, Thorn, and her new flame, the sweetly sensitive wizard Nick. With her life growing more harried by the minute, Nat must stay cool, calm, and collected . . . or else risk losing everything.

For those who are interested, you can find our review of the book here.

Good luck everyone.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Taken by Benedict Jacka Book 3 of the Alex Verus Series

 I'm going to say right from the beginning that I am huge fanpoodle of Benedict Jacka.  It took me longer than I would have liked to get to this book, but when I finally started, I read it from start to finish in one sitting.  Be prepared for much fanpoodling.

The days of a peaceful life running his store are over for Alex Verus.  After what happened with the Fateweaver he is now highly visible and in high demand.  When apprentices start to go missing, Alex decides to take a job hunting down the reason.  With his apprentice Luna at his side, Alex must face a force which may very well be impossible to stop.  If that were not enough Onyx, an old faux has a score he wants to settle.

Normally speaking, I don't like books with a lot of action but the interweaving of mystery and the interesting characters were absolutely gripping. Luna has finally gotten a degree of control over her power and though she will never be an equal of a mage, she is dangerous all on her own.  I love the growth that we have seen in this character from book one. Though she has a lot to learn, Luna is no longer content to wait to be saved and has become a very active part of Verus' investigations.

For the first time in this series, Jacka introduced characters of colour in this novel.  Variam is a heat mage and extremely powerful.  He has been given a raw deal by mage society and is determined to survive.  He is not easily trusting which is understandable given his history but he does in the end learn to trust Alex.  He is absolutely devoted to Anne though he does not like her but because his brother died trying to protect her.  I had a problem with this until it was revealed that Anne is a descendant of Indian mages who attacked the Jagadev - a non human of Indian descent. Jacka could have fallen into the trap of making Variam and Anne completely dependent on Verus as is often the case when the protagonist is a White male, but at the end of the day, they will have to make their own way in the world.  It means something to have a White male protagonist admit that though he has more experience, he is not as powerful as the two characters of colour.

Review: Imperative by P.A. Wilson, Book 1 of the Quinn Larson Quests

Quinn is a Wizard, one of the Real People, a magical being hidden from humanity. And they’re hidden for good reason – the last time one of the Real People was revealed, it resulted in the extinction of the vampires. And with their death, their power died with them, reducing all of the Real People.

Which means he especially worries when humans start dying. The fairies are killing humans and using their souls to power the Sidhe political struggle, while the Sidhe hold the threat of magical sterility over the fairies to demand their co-operation. As the bodies pile up, there is more chance of humanity noticing the body count – and the subsequent backlash that could cause yet another Real Person extinction and a reduction of all of them.

Of course, the Sidhe are too short sighted to listen to reason and Quinn, as a Spirit Wizard, is oathbound against harm – that leaves him the task to either break the Sidhe’s curse on the fairies or otherwise restore their fertility – aided by Cate a fellow Witch and Olun, a pixie who has been bound to protect humanity.

This book got a lot right for me with the story telling. The pacing was excellent, nicely maintained themes without being distracted or tangented, especially for its style. This is a book where the characters are brainstorming a solution to a problem. It isn’t an action packed battle nor is it a mystery in the sense that they all know what the problem is from the very beginning. But they need to find a solution – one that involves a lot of brainstorming, a lot of trial and error and a lot of planning. It’s a nice change from swashbuckling and action and I quite like that the protagonist Quinn, as a Spirit Mage, is denied violence as a solution anyway. Instead they’ve got to use all the tools and information at their disposal to find a peaceful solution.

The problem is that, since this is a new book of a new series in a brand new world, I’m not entirely sure what all the tools and information at their disposal actually amounts to. This means they just keep pulling out magic tricks we don’t know or understand yet. It does shows us a lot of the wide world and its residents and the limits of the wizards – so it really develops the world building – but this is the problem with Magic users with unknown magic looking to solve a problem – in the end they’re going to pull out a big bottle of Magicus Problemis Soluntionai and solve it. For all that, I’m impressed by how it did keep me engaged while they tried different magical solutions and we did get to see around some of the limits of the wizards, their powers and their world without undue info-dumping.

I had some real problems picturing the protagonist – to such a degree that I actually didn’t realise Quinn was a man until 20% into the book. He grew on me as the book progressed but I found it really hard to truly connect to him – I needed more of him in the book, as a person, as a protagonist, I had none of his history, his hobbies, his life, he had no pets or habits or friends who weren’t useful. I needed something of Quinn as a person to latch on to rather than just Quinn the protagonist, the actor, the one who drives the story. I want to see more of the history of him and how he relates to the world – what actually makes a Wizard a Wizard rather than a normal human? What is his relationship with Olan? (For that matter, what/who is exactly is Olan?) He’s 300 years old – what has he been doing, what does that mean how did he live, what does he do? The vampires were wiped out, what does that mean? What does that mean for humanity and Real People? What did that mean to him? I need some tangible hooks rather than rather coldly stated facts. And there’s no physical description of him – I know it’s a minor thing, but I can’t picture what this guy looks like at all.

Coveted by Shawntelle Madison Book 1 in the Coveted Series

Natalya Stravinsky lives in South Toms River, New Jersey and works cataloging antiques, having been forced to leave behind her dream job in New York.  Natalya, is a werewolf but unlike the rest of her family, she is no longer pack, after being thrown out when the alpha discovered that she has issues with anxiety and OCD.  To make matters worse, though she still spends time with her family, she often feels like an outsider at family events and they are no longer close.

Natalya developed a routine for herself going to work and buying Christmas decorations, which she comes to see as her friends. Though she is lonely at times, she is getting by, until her ex boyfriend and heir apparent to the local pack Thorne moves back to town.  Now she is constantly hoping to get a glimpse of him.  When her friend Aggie shows up looking for a place to stay, Nat reluctantly opens her home and in the process, creates a widening of her boundaries. This leads to her going on her first day in five years, buying new clothing and even restarting therapy, where she meets a wizard named Nick.  Chemistry quickly develops between Nick and Thorne, but she is not sure whether or not she is ready to move on with her life.

Things are are really starting to look up for Nat, until the Long Island werewolves decide that they want the territory of the local pack.  Nat approaches the alpha sure that she can help but is quickly rebuffed and shamed.  Things escalate, when she becomes a target and her family is attacked.  Nat is scared and unsure but loyalty forces her to find the strength that she needs to fight.

There were times when I felt that Coveted was overwritten because Madison included details that were obviously extraneous, yet I was completely drawn into the story and found myself rooting for Nat.  There are a lot of werewolf books on the market, but Coveted is absolutely unique.  Nat is neurologically atypical and so is every character in her therapy group.  Often in urban fantasy, the supernatural element spends time whining about how oppressed they are, but Nat really and truly is oppressed in a real world sense, though she is a werewolf.  Nat has to negotiate abelism in her community and is heavily stigmatized. Without a doubt, Madison's treatment of disability is the best I have read in the genre to date and as a disabled woman, I greatly appreciated the inclusion.

Another aspect of Nat's disability that I found fascinating is the fact that she is a hoarder.  Nat tries to deny this because she is extremely conscious of having everything as clean as possible.  She knows that the fact that she cannot stop buying Christmas decorations and storing them in boxes all over her house is a problem, but when she is stressed, or feeling down, she simply cannot stop herself.  Madison did an excellent job detailing the compulsion behind her actions.  Where she kind of went off the rails was when she revealed that Nat's great grandmother was a hoarder and her family assumed that this was something in the gene pool. Yes, there are generations of hoarders; however, it is usually passes from generation to generation when there is a shared living space.  It doesn't just hop generations.

Review of Libriomancer: Book One of the Magis Ex Libris Series By Jim C. Hines

 

Isaac Vainio is employed as a librarian, but his work with books has more than a mundane purpose.  Isaac is a libromancer, which means he can pull different items out of books.  Despite his fantastic abilities, Isaac is stuck simply cataloging magical potential in the books he reads due to his ongoing suspension from the magical order Die Zwelf Portenaere.  Things might have continued on this way, had Issac not been attacked by vampires and saved by the dryad Lena.  It seems that the vampires have declared war on all of the porters, and though suspended from his duties, Issac is drawn right into the middle.

With Lena and Smudge (his magical spider) by his side, Isaac must try to discover who is taking over vampire bodies and why -- but even more important -- he must find Gutenberg, the 600+ year old libriomancer, who is the leader of of Die Zwelf Portenaere.  As powerful as Isaac is, he is up against forces he couldn't even have imagined.  He also has to deal with his conflict surrounding Lena, who is a magical creature specifically created to pleasure others.  She has no real will of her own and despite wanting Issac to be her new lover, now that she believes that her former lover Dr. Shah is dead, Issac must struggle with morality of being with her romantically.

Libromancer is one of the most original stories that I have read in a very long time.  It drew me in from the very first page and left me wanting so much more.  Be forewarned that this book review is going to be filled with much fanpoodling.  Libriomancer is a book for anyone with a love of reading because Hines draws on so many stories to craft his tale.  It is for anyone who has ever gotten lost in a book and wondered what it would be like to be a part of the story or interact with items from a story. I was captivated with idea of being able to pull an item like the holy grail out of the bible to prolong life, or the opportunity to eat the cake from Alice in Wonderland to shrink in size. The idea of a child unaware of their magical ability accidentally pulling smurfs out of a book, who then proceed to run amok had me giggling.  Especially fascinating was the revelation that the more people read and enjoy a story, the more the world is imbued with magic.  Thanks to the huge increase in vampire fiction since the release of Interview with the Vampire, the vampire population has multiplied several times. This means that for every new cannon, a new race of vampires is born. The child in me who read by a night light way past my bedtime was absolutely thrilled.

Game of Changes by Harry Connolly Book 2 of The Twenty Palaces Series

 

In this book, Ray Lilly is picked up at his working class job by Catherine because the twenty palaces society has work for him to do.  She is not impressed to drive an hour out of her way to pick a wooden man.  A big auction is happening for a predator in the tiny town of Washaway and Ray and Catherine are tasked with finding out the details of what is going on.

As to be expected, the situation quickly escalates and Ray becomes a one man rescuer once again.  Someone has to save the town from the sapphire dog who has made pets of most of the town's residents causing them to kill each other so that it can feed on them.  The sapphire dog creates feelings of love and adoration in its victim when you look at it and marks you as belonging to it when it licks you.  Because of the power the sapphire dog wields a primary - a powerful sorcerer,  who has actually been on the hit list of the twenty palace society for quite some time will stop at nothing to possess the sapphire dog and has used magic to make it impossible for anyone to leave town or call for help.

We do briefly see a return of Annalise towards the end of the book.  Ray is relieved to see her because he knows that he is in over his head and yet once again, Annalise is not around for the final showdown.  Though all he has is his ghost knife and known of her power, Ray is able to defeat the primary that Annalise lost to.  Uh huh.  I don't understand the point of repeatedly suggesting that Annalise is this all powerful being, only to have Ray save her again.  If you don't actually follow through with a display of power, telling us about her power is pointless.  It feels at this point more like Annalise is Ray's wooden man than the other way around. This theme is somewhat relieved by Catherine who when kidnapped does manage to rescue herself before Ray can do his prince charming to the rescue routine; however, once again when the action happens, Catherine is nowhere to be seen.  Ray sends her away because she is a mother of two small children. 

The Dresden Files: Season 1 Episode 9: The Other Dick

To continue to be a police consultant Harry, apparently, has to get his private investigator’s license, which involves class rooms and tests (well, given that he continually uses magic which doesn’t look good on police investigations and half of the cases he’s worked on must be marked unsolved, I think it’s a miracle he’s still a consultant at all). Unfortunately for Harry, the class isn’t a charity and he isn’t paying his fees – sending him begging to Murphy for money.

Oh, and for extra fun, his teacher (Brenan) turns up dead. Really, murdering the teacher in a private investigator school? Surely someone’s going to figure it out! (But it’d make a great final test wouldn’t it? Who murdered your teacher – for an A) and, of course, Harry was found over the body (which is such a habit of his Murphy doesn’t even suspect him any more. Honestly, Harry must stand around bodies waiting to be discovered lurking over them). The man was also charged with electricity – shocking Harry when he touched him

The main clue they have is that he was working on something before he died – though his notes are in code and his assistant, Fontaine (who thinks Harry should be arrested) knows nothing about it. Harry wants to solve this case because the deceased was a decent man, a good man. And Bob thinks he wants to solve it because Fontaine is an attractive woman. Of course, Bob is a dirty old lecher – but not always wrong when it comes to Harry and his disturbing  habit of getting very close to female clients.

Using some magic on the notes translates them and he heads to see Ronald Jones, HR manager at a meat packing plant where he meets up with and teams up with Fontaine.  Turns out Jones hired Brenan to follow his wife who was spending a lot more time away from home – but Brenan cleared her of having an affair, something Fontaine doesn’t agree with. There follows much tug of war between Harry and Fontaine over who is in the lead.

Following the wife, Felicity, leads them to many many shops and a fertility clinic in a ley line cluster – something Harry wants to follow up alone but ends up having to bring Fontaine along with him. Naturally, hilarity ensues. But Harry follows a ley line into a room. Now, I think the writer was aiming for this “alternative therapy room” to be full of creepy occult stuff (so the music implies). To me I just see a metric fuckton of candles with some rather abstract artwork and odd little potpourri piles. It’s quite pleasant, really. Anyway Felicity is being treated in the pleasantly decorated not-very-spooky occult room. Other than Brenan being grabby with Fontaine, they don’t find much else and leave with piccies of the occult room and a sample of tea from it.