Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass
Kira Solomon is an art appraiser, and one of the best in the business. She has something of an advantage over most, mind you, as she is a psychometric (that is, she can "read" emotions and receive visions from items she touches. This has its downside, as well--when she was a teen and her power first kicked into full gear, she couldn't wear anyone else's clothes or eat any food but vegetables she picked herself, or touch anyone without going
Rogue on them and absorbing their memories. Eventually she got help for that, but she still must wear gloves everywhere lest she accidentally touch someone. Yes, it actually is a pretty lonely life). She has settled into Atlanta, when an art dealer who serves as both a friend and mentor to her brings her an ancient dagger that is clearly bespelled.
When she touches it, she learns that it is Egyptian, four thousand years old, and that its original owner used it to slaughter thousands of people. Which, if you think about it, is what you would expect an ancient Egyptian warrior given a magic weapon to do. What's worse is that she realizes that he is still alive, and will be coming after his weapon.
Mind you, she knows he won't find it easy to get the knife back, as long as it is in her possession. Kira is a Shadow Chaser, an elite agent of the Gilead Society (whose leader is named Balm. They're a subtle lot, the Gilead Society), whose duty is to fight Shadow. Exactly what Shadow is is never really made clear, but as they are considered chaotic in nature that may be deliberate. Anyway, really, the name says it all, right? Kira's psychometry powers her other abilities, which make her essentially the Slayer of this story.
Fortunately, the Warrior, going by the name of Khefar, isn't evil. He's been spending his vastly prolonged life trying to atone for the killing at the start by saving at least one person for every one he killed (one person he must save is Kira). He's cool and tough and has what sound like really cool dreads. Did I mention he's accompanied by an avatar of Anansi?
But there's something else going on in town, too. Another force is interested in Khefar's dagger--the forces of Shadow. They will kill anyone they can to get it, endanger Kira's friends, try to take out Kira herself, and manifest their most powerful forces--a Shadow Avatar-- to try to claim the dagger, and Atlanta, for themselves.
Kira and Khefar are both great characters: strong warriors, suffering from their individual curses, attractive and seeming to be real people. Plus, for those of you who have been looking for Urban Fantasy characters who are non-white, both are of African descent (Khefar of course comes right out of Africa). In fact, I'm pretty sure that most of the characters in the book are People of Colour.
A good read, and an interesting read. Recommended.
Darkness On the Edge of Town by Brian Keene
Reading Brian Keene is always something of a crapshoot. Sometimes he's
really good, and sometimes he's
really bad (we'll also talk about the bad when we get to the end of the year). The best stories he does focus, not on the monsters, but on the human interaction in the face of the apparent end of the world. This is one of those books.
Robbie Higgins is a stoner, living with his girlfriend Christy and working the night shift at a pizza joint in the small town of Walden, Virginia (pop. 11 873). One morning, the sun just doesn't rise. The town is shrouded in mysterious darkness. Anyone who goes to the city limits sees visions; people they loved and/or missed. Robbie sees his beloved Grandfather, who died when Robbie was 15. Christy sees her father. Their neighbour Russ sees his ex-wife.
The local crazy homeless guy, known as Dez, claims to have protected the town by circling it with something--and when our heroes are at the edge of town they do find stranges drawings across the road. The darkness on the other side of the drawings is different from the darkness inside town (that's where the "visions" occur). Anyone who crosses the line of drawings never comes back . . . though sometimes their screams are heard.
It seems that, back in the day, Dez used to some sort of occult investigator/monster fighter--until he and his buddies took on something too big for them. They won, but many of them died and Dez was broken. He still forms a useful source of exposition, at least for a while.
So Dez blocked the darkness out. But while that means it can't come in and kill them directly (as Dez says it has done to the rest of the world), does that mean it can't reach inside and affect people? Or does that even matter, if people inside the town already have some sort of darkness within them?
Unfortunately, when Dez does his exposition, he gives us what is perhaps Keene's greatest weakness: names. Remember back in
the Rising and The City of the Dead I said that "Ob" (demon lord responsible for raising the dead) and his brother Apu (demon lord responsible for 24-hour convenience stores) were the dumbest names for demons I ever? This time Keene surpasses himself. Dez and his companions fought the dread demon lord "Meeble".
I bet Meeble gets teased by all the other demon lords. He always gets picked last for demon ball. "Meeble the feeble", they call him.
Brian Keene, ladies and gentlemen: good man with the psychological horror, bad with naming demons.
Despite which, and because Meeble is only a small footnote to the actual story, I'm going to call this one, recommended.