Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Book Review of Into the Mist (Falcon Mercenary Group #1), by Maya Banks

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I borrowed a copy of Into the Mist, by Maya Banks, through Hoopla.

Description from Goodreads:

Hostage recovery specialist Eli Chance has a secret. He was born a shifter. A freak of nature.

While on a mission, Eli’s men and their mercenary guide are exposed to a powerful chemical agent, and suddenly his secret has become easier to hide. Now he’s not the only one with the gift. But for his men, this “gift” is becoming more and more of a curse.

Tyana Berezovsky’s brother Damiano was the guide for Eli’s team and was the worst affected by the chemical. As he grows increasingly unstable, Tyana fears she’s going to lose him to the beast he is becoming.

Tyana will do whatever it takes to help him, even if it means using her body to go after the one man she thinks holds all the blame—and possibly the cure. Eli Chance.

Review:

Anyone who has read my reviews very often will have come across at least one in which I’ve said that I used to think I hated the romance genre and refused to read it. Then, one day, I Realized that it wasn’t actually romance I hated but the gender representations common in romance books. I’ve learned that if I’m selective, I can quite enjoy romance. 

Into the Mist is not one of those books. It is full of all the gendered BS that I hate and avoided for so very long. Tyana is supposed to be strong and talented and skilled, but she’s a walking disaster of TSTL. Her primary character development is being a rape victim as a child. And sadly, that’s more than anyone else in the novel gets. 

The paranormal aspects of the book are so sketchy and poorly thought out that I finally just decided that they’re there as window dressing to world the characters live in. And that world is so ill-defined that I didn’t even know if shifters were out or not. So, basically the world existed simply to give the characters different places to have sex. And the sex wasn’t even that hot. 

All in all, as my first Banks book, I was disappointed. Additionally, the narrator did a fine job. However, I hated the fragile, breathy way she played Tyana. It only exacerbated my frustration with the book.

Extreme Medical Services

Book Review of Extreme Medical Services, by Jamie Davis

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I borrowed an audio copy of Jamie Davis‘ Extreme Medical Services through Hoopla.

Description from Goodreads:

Monsters, Paramedics, and Street Medicine.
New paramedic Dean Flynn is fresh out of the academy. When he gets assigned to the unknown backwater ambulance Station U, he wonders what he did wrong. Then Dean learns that his patients aren’t your normal 911 callers. Dean and his partner Brynne Garvey serve the creatures of myth and legend living alongside their normal human neighbors in Elk City. With patients that are vampires, werewolves, fairies and more, will Dean survive his first days on the new job? Will his patients? Not all is well on the streets of Elk City either, and some humans are striking out at their mythical neighbors. Dean soon finds himself in the middle of a series of attacks on his patients, attacks that implicate a former member of Station U.

Review:

I’ll grant that this is well written. Mechanically it feels solid. However, it’s obvious that the author is (or has been) a paramedic, and probably a trainer. Listening to this book was more like sitting through a ‘How to be a proper, empathetic EMT’ than an urban fantasy. Unfortunately, I signed up for a fun fantasy ride, not a didactic sermon (or ten). You might think using all the correct words for things would be a good thing, but coming across things like capnography dropped in casually was a distraction. And there is A LOT of that sort of thing. Worse for the audio version, Scarlato (who did a great job otherwise) wasn’t quite able to make the strange words roll off his tongue. There was often a micro-pause before. So, they stood out even more.

Basically I was bored for most of the book. The vast majority of it is just descriptions of what the ambulance crew do on their runs, with no actual plot. Then, in the last 10% or so a plot finally developed. But apparently it was only being introduced for the next book, which I don’t think I’ll be reading.

Again, it’s not necessarily bad. It’d probably be a great way to get new emergency services students used to some of the ideas. But for the average reader………

Monster of the Week

Book Review of Monster of the Week (The Rules #2), by F.T. Lukens

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Cover of Monster of the Week.

I received an advanced copy of F. T. Lukens‘ Monster of the Week through Netgalley. As it happens, I’ve also pre-ordered a paperback copy. But I won’t have that in hand until October.

Description from Goodreads:

Spring semester of Bridger Whitt’s senior year of high school is looking great. He has the perfect boyfriend, a stellar best friend, and an acceptance letter to college. He also has this incredible job as an assistant to Pavel Chudinov, an intermediary tasked with helping cryptids navigate the modern world. His days are filled with kisses, laughs, pixies, and the occasional unicorn. Life is awesome. But as graduation draws near, Bridger’s perfect life begins to unravel. Uncertainties about his future surface, his estranged dad shows up out of nowhere, and, perhaps worst of all, a monster-hunting television show arrives in town to investigate the series of strange events from last fall. The show’s intrepid host will not be deterred, and Bridger finds himself trapped in a game of cat and mouse that could very well put the myth world at risk. Again.

Review (with spoiler):

I generally adore this series. I absolutely loved the first book. I can’t say I loved this second one quite as much, but I did really enjoy it. I’ll start with what I like. There is a lot of love here. Bridger has a wonderfully supportive crew and the theme of Found Family is a wonderful one. The cast of regular characters are quirky and fun and effortlessly diverse. And I really appreciated that Lukens allowed Bridger to cut the toxic family member from his life, rather than force an artificial reconciliation. 

Things I didn’t like as much was the plot dependance on the ambitious, ‘evil professional woman.’ It’s more nuanced than that here, but it’s still a pretty shitty trope that I hate. I thought things got a little didactic at times. And the focus of the book was less on the action and antics of the cryptic, here in Monster of the Week, and more on Bridger’s school life. I preferred the former. 

All in all, I can’t wait for more of Lukens’ work.