urban fantasy; dark fantasy
This is the first book in the Kate Daniels urban fantasy series.
The setting of this book - the Atlanta of an alternate Earth, which has been very much changed after waves of magic have started hitting - is one of the most imaginative and compelling I have run into in urban fantasy, where many authors just take the nearest big city and throw in vampires and werewolves and the like. This is probably the most compelling urban fantasy setting I have run into since I read Kim Harrison's first Hollows book.
The waves of magic come and go, sometimes destroying such high tech devices as skyscrapers and electricity. When the magic ebbs, the tech will work. So sometimes people can drive cars. Sometimes they use vehicles that run on magic. And a lot of them just use horses, which can work when the world is in either a magic or a tech phase.
When the magic started, all sorts of creatures came out of the closet. The vampires are probably the creepiest. There is nothing brooding or sexy about them whatsoever. No emo harem boys like in Laurell K. Hamilton's books (thank God). They are the mindless and hungry animated dead, and true monsters. The vampires, and more importantly, the necromancers who control them, have formed a contingent called the People.
Weres of all sorts of types have also come out. Under the leadership of the Beast Lord, Curran (some sort of prehistoric lion of immense power), they are a contingent called the Pack. Those who are infected by the virus and who cannot control the animal side become ravaging killers, hunted down by the Pack.
Kate Daniels is a mercenary in this world, armed with a magical sword named Slayer. She also carries magic in her blood, though that magic and its source is left a mystery to explore in further books.
Kate's guardian, a knight-protector of great power, is murdered. When Kate investigates she finds that many mortal women are missing or murdered, and many members of both People and Pack have also been murdered. It looks as if someone - an extremely powerful and threatening someone - is trying to start a war between those two groups. But what would that person want with the mortal women? There are pieces of the puzzle missing, and Kate must try to put the clues together before she becomes the next victim.
Very enjoyable, and I think this series will become an auto-buy for me, along with Kim Harrison and Jim Butcher in the increasingly crowded subgenre of urban fantasy.[/img]