Midnight Blue-Light Special, by Seanan McGuire
Second paragraph of third chapter:I walked briskly through the empty dressing room to my locker. If I was going to have a chat with Dominic, I wanted to do it while I was wearing pants, and more heavily armed than it was possible to be in lace and petticoats. In addition to being a waitress and Ryan’s girlfriend, Istas served as Kitty’s costume designer, and she believed firmly in snaps and zippers and quick releases. Being a waheela-a type of Inuit therianthrope-meant she understood that sometimes people need to get out of their clothes in a hurry. That made them practical for work-wear, but not so much for the sort of things I was likely to get up to with Dominic De Luca.
Second volume of McGuire's popular InCryptid saga, which actually got the most votes in last year's Hugo for Best Series but lost to The Expanse on transfers. I wrote of the first volume:I felt this was really Buffy reheated for New York, and as soon as the tall handsome antagonist hove into view I could see how it was going to end.
I felt much the same about this one; the heroine's voice is wearyingly sassy, the infodumping is incessant, we barely notice when there is a change of narrators part way through, and she manages to safely make an escape from the baddies climbing naked across New York rooftops having just been shot in the abdomen. One positive point is that although there are lots of non-human supernatural characters, the real monsters are the other humans. I won't read any more of the series, but I am sure it will keep on being nominated as long as that Hugo category lasts. You can get this one here.
This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that list was Sugar and other stories, by A.S. Byatt.
Second volume of McGuire's popular InCryptid saga, which actually got the most votes in last year's Hugo for Best Series but lost to The Expanse on transfers. I wrote of the first volume:I felt this was really Buffy reheated for New York, and as soon as the tall handsome antagonist hove into view I could see how it was going to end.
I felt much the same about this one; the heroine's voice is wearyingly sassy, the infodumping is incessant, we barely notice when there is a change of narrators part way through, and she manages to safely make an escape from the baddies climbing naked across New York rooftops having just been shot in the abdomen. One positive point is that although there are lots of non-human supernatural characters, the real monsters are the other humans. I won't read any more of the series, but I am sure it will keep on being nominated as long as that Hugo category lasts. You can get this one here.
This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that list was Sugar and other stories, by A.S. Byatt.