Tagged with demons

With my read of book eleven of the Hollows series, I've logged enough time with Rachel Morgan that I'll probably stay with her indefinitely. That's why I stuck with this entry, even though it was pretty far off the rails with lots of mystical shit like balancing ley lines and detecting aura signatures.

The best thing about this first entry in a paranormal fiction series is that the sympathetic characters are evil. The succubus, imp, vampires and demons have one angel in their posse, but the titular character doesn't think much of him. The others like the angel okay, but mostly because he's a drinking buddy.

Twilight meets The Historian. The protagonist is a witch, but vampires figure prominently. Diana Bishop is a renowned scholar on alchemy doing research at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. She pages an enchanted book and all hell breaks loose in the creature community (which includes daemons as well as witches and vampires). The research part is interesting, but the story devolves into the overprotective male vamp, gendered power struggle, and abstinence porn that drove some feminists crazy about the Twilight series.

The second installment of Briggs's Mercy Thompson series is as compelling as the first. Or maybe it isn't, because it's not new. And the multiple love interests are starting to show themselves. Not only is Mercy about to find herself caught between a werewolf and a vampire (yawn!), she's also torn between two werewolves. The other thing I found a little annoying this time around is the introduction of one of Mercy's other skills: talking to ghosts. It seems totally inorganic, both to the plot and to the universe Briggs has created.