On the Edge by Ilona Andrews
In Rose Drayton’s world, there’s the Weird, a seemingly feudal world of magic, and the Broken, the mundane world we live in. Between them is the Edge, a strip of land where people drive trucks and shop at Wal-Mart, but where magic exists. Rose is an Edger, and the first Edger in decades to be able to Flash white, an ability typically only found in bluebloods from the Weird.
In addition to most of her adult life being spent protecting herself from bluebloods who want her to give them babies that can Flash (and the people who would happily sell her to them) both of Rose’s parents are gone, and she works an off-the-books job to support her two younger brothers, one of whom is a necromancer, and the other, a shapeshifter. Into this comes Declan, seemingly yet another blueblood who wants her to give him special babies, and another blueblood who may end destroying the Edge.
Like Andrews’s Kate Daniel books, On the Edge features a tough woman, her alpha male love interest with responsibilities, and her Cute Young Accessories. You can’t even really say the resemblances end there, however, because the characters bear no real resemblances to each other. Kate’s world is post-apocalyptic and fantastical and she worries about things like werewolf mobs or something. Rose’s world is mundane and familiar, and she worries about things like one of her brothers developing a complex because he only got a bottle of bubbles when the other brother got new shoes.
On the Edge isn’t quite urban fantasy as we tend to think of it these days (your first clue is that the cover featured Rose with a head, fully clothed, and not wearing leather) but more along the lines of the modern fantasy from a while back that eventually morphed into urban fantasy. It’s more directly romantic than Andrews’ other books, and seems to be pretty self-contained with no glaringly-dangling plot threads to be followed up on later, though there’s room for sequels. I didn’t find it quite as energetic and entertaining as I do the Kate Daniels books, but I liked it a lot.
In addition to most of her adult life being spent protecting herself from bluebloods who want her to give them babies that can Flash (and the people who would happily sell her to them) both of Rose’s parents are gone, and she works an off-the-books job to support her two younger brothers, one of whom is a necromancer, and the other, a shapeshifter. Into this comes Declan, seemingly yet another blueblood who wants her to give him special babies, and another blueblood who may end destroying the Edge.
Like Andrews’s Kate Daniel books, On the Edge features a tough woman, her alpha male love interest with responsibilities, and her Cute Young Accessories. You can’t even really say the resemblances end there, however, because the characters bear no real resemblances to each other. Kate’s world is post-apocalyptic and fantastical and she worries about things like werewolf mobs or something. Rose’s world is mundane and familiar, and she worries about things like one of her brothers developing a complex because he only got a bottle of bubbles when the other brother got new shoes.
On the Edge isn’t quite urban fantasy as we tend to think of it these days (your first clue is that the cover featured Rose with a head, fully clothed, and not wearing leather) but more along the lines of the modern fantasy from a while back that eventually morphed into urban fantasy. It’s more directly romantic than Andrews’ other books, and seems to be pretty self-contained with no glaringly-dangling plot threads to be followed up on later, though there’s room for sequels. I didn’t find it quite as energetic and entertaining as I do the Kate Daniels books, but I liked it a lot.