The Black Sun's Daughter (series)
Vicious Grace - M.L.N. Hanover: The Black Sun's Daughter book 3
Vicious Grace, which came out Tuesday, is the 3rd book in The Black Sun's Daughter (following Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels), and it's the one in which the protagonists finally start figuring out what is going on. (And no, it's by no means the last - this is an urban fantasy series, not a fantasy trilogy.) The Black Sun's Daughter is one of the most intelligent series out there right now, in that it not only lets but expects the reader to draw their own conclusions. At the end of book 3, the main character is just beginning to come to the conclusion that I came to at the end of book 1, but which I now believe to be only part of the truth . . . although all the main characters have at least somewhat caught up with the implications of what they've been doing.
This review is probably going to have massive spoilers for books 1 and 2, and parts of book 3, although I will try to keep these to a minimum.
I read Unclean Spirits when it came out in trade pb in 2008, after which my mom lost my copy for 2 years. Shortly thereafter Pocket Books underwent a reorganization and became the mass market pb arm of Gallery Books (both part of Simon & Schuster), so that books 2 and onward have been coming out solely in mass market. The series is written by a pseudonymous winner of the International Horror Award, whom I have heard is Daniel Abraham. I don't like Daniel Abraham's stuff, but I love The Black Sun's Daughter.
Unclean Spirits tells the story of Jayné (Zha-NAY) Heller, child of white fundamentalist parents who had escaped to the ungodliness of a college which is unaffiliated with a church and then flunked out. All of a sudden she receives a communication that her father's estranged brother Eric, about whom she knows pretty much nothing other than her father said he's sacrilegious, has died and left her everything. She assumed he was gay. Actually he was a wizard, among other things.
Jayné meets Eric's coterie of assistants - Aubrey (male), his PA; Ex, a former Jesuit who does exorcisms; and Chogyi Jake, a quietly cheerful guy with Buddhist training (he's getting to be my favourite character). She also discovers he was filthy rich and was murdered by a group of magic-users called the Invisible College, which Aubrey and co have been expecting her to know about and stop. Eric, it seems, spent his life beatifically fighting riders, spirits from the Pleroma (universe/plane next door) who possess humans (sometimes indicated by tattoos) and do evil. Jayné and her new assistants/teachers kill the rider controlling the Invisible College and disrupt their ritual, despite the rider saying something along the lines of 'you don't know what you're--aigh.' In the course of the book, we learn that in high school or college (I haven't got the book back from Mom yet) Jayné got a partial tattoo during a night she doesn't remember, and Eric bailed her out. She assumes, normally enough, that she got really drunk. Jayné also seems to handle herself unusually well in fights, which the heroes assume is due to wards Eric cast to help her. I basically ended book 1 thinking Jayné had a rider and Eric possibly had dealings with some riders.
I didn't review book 2, Darker Angels, here because the heroes spend a lot of the book believing a racist picture of voudou (riders duping generations of worshipers while serial killing) and planning to kidnap a black schoolgirl to exorcise her for her own good. Gradually they realise they have the picture wrong, and end up allying with the schoolgirl's guardian against a different rider than they thought they would target. They are sort of shocked to find out Eric may have been making deals with riders. Aubrey's ex-wife Kim is introduced to the readers, which complicates Aubrey and Jayné's romance. And something went on with Jayné's mother before/during Jayné's pregnancy - Jayné thinks her mother had an affair, and it blows her mind.
In book 3, Jayné's group is forced to really confront, due to further revelations, the fact that hero Eric was actually completely amoral and was manipulating them. A bunch of people in a dream study at a hospital have all started dreaming the same image, which prompts Kim to call in Jayné's group to find out what's going on. They find that the ritual they disrupted in the first book was designed to help keep a rider called a haugsvarmr that possesses systems instead of people trapped underneath the hospital. They don't know if Eric was planning to break it free or strike a deal with it or what. It pretty clearly dislikes Jayné. Then the group gets hit with their revelations about Eric, and events involving the hospital rider accelerate. It becomes unclear whether the group actually can contain it. During one of the confrontations, the haugsvarmr - which Ex and Chogyi Jake seem to have decided offstage was the one that possessed Germany during WWII, although this identification is never discussed - calls Jayné 'daughter-thing' and says it enslaved her mother. It turns out when Jayné was around 12 she had a series of repeated nightmares where she had a double self, and some of the dreams had sun imagery in them - a pale sun that purifies a desert. She also experienced an odd phenomenon in college where all her friends turned away from her for no explained reason. I'm not going to reveal the ending of the novel, but Jayné comes away from it believing that her talents during battle are the result of having a rider.
At this point I'm not sure about that - right now I think the Black Sun (who is identified as female) possessed a male human who had an affair with Jayné's mother and that Jayné's apparent possession comes from having a sort of secondary rider-self that is programmed with information about riders. I wonder if Eric manipulated Jayné's college life the way he manipulated Kim's life. But I'm not sure how the tattoo fits in, or what Eric's plans were, and I have no idea what future revelations Hanover is going to bring upon us. I'm quite looking forward to finding out.
So if the protagonists don't know what's going on, are they stupid? They continued to believe in Eric long enough to almost do some unethical things in book 2, and still tried to follow his plans into book 3. Jayné's team also haven't thought about Jayné being possessed.
I think all of the group's misapprehensions have to do with Eric - his former assistants believe in him, they believe in his plans and that everything will go all right if they follow them, they believe that Jayné must be his choice of successor and therefore either perfect or prepared. Given the incident involving the Mark of Naxos, it's possible Eric put loyalty spells on Ex, Aubrey, and/or Chogyi Jake. This probably wouldn't be necessary for Ex, who believes he is fighting demons by fighting riders. He's set up for a little fanaticism. Chogyi Jake is pretty perceptive, and as Jayné puts it, calls her on her bullshit while being calm and cheerful. I'm a bit more surprised he didn't figure anything out about Eric.
Jayné at the beginning of the series is very young and has had 2 homes taken away from her - her conservative family, then her friends at college. She's been saved by her uncle before and is looking for a home. When she steps into a fairy tale, she doesn't question it. Eric's assistants have been trying to identify the wards they think are strengthening Jayné. They just haven't found anything yet (probably because they aren't there). Although Aubrey's seen her naked, so he probably knows she has a tattoo. I think Jayné's taking this long to figure things out is understandable, and Ex also. Chogyi Jake and Aubrey I'm not so sure about, which is sad. But I'm open to waiting to see what happens, as the author can be tricky.
All in all, this is a very good series written in a style that draws you right in. I've kind of given up paranormals except for Briggs and Harris, but I still read this series, and I can't wait til the next book.