BOOK REVIEW: Playing With Fire by Katie MacAlister

Katie MacAlister writes contemporary romance, and the urban fantasy paranormal Aisling Grey books.  Aisling makes a brief appearance here, but Playing With Fire is the first book of the Silver Dragons series.  MacAlister’s urban fantasy has creatures both mythical and magical living with humans and includes frequent popular TV and film pop culture references.  Her style is an interesting mix of humor and drama and quite entertaining.  The opening lines, “Good Twin calling evil twin.  The weasel crows at midnight. How Copy?”, sets the stage for this urban fantasy romantic suspense story that reminds me somewhat of Harry Dresden on a smaller stage.

May Northcott, a doppelganger thief that is owned by a demon lord, Magoth, thanks to her ‘twin’ sister, Cyrene,a ditzy naiad with a penchant for public trouble.  May was ‘created’ from Cyrene by Magoth during a time when Cyrere was enthralled by him.  At his request, she bound May to him.  Like all dopplegangers, her original twin had to surrender a part of herself to her ‘twin’.  Cyrene chose to give her common sense.  (The fact that Cyrene is enthralled with a demon lord does leave me wondering if she had much common sense to begin with.)  The sign of a doppelganger is the lack of a shadow when in light.

Magoth makes good use of May’s unusual ability to ‘shadow walk’ – disappear into the shadows thereby avoiding most security.  Magoth’s very vain, handsome, bad tempered, sexy, greedy, willful, spoiled, – and he wants to seduce May.  May is finding it harder and harder to resist his advances.  His latest order to steal the Liquor Hepatis from a mage has May dealing with her well meaning, but flakey twin during a difficult robbery.  Affectionately called Mayling by Cyrene, is ‘trying to be helpful’ by keeping watch from a tree – sort of.

BOOK REVIEW: Evil in Carnations by Kate Collins

Since Stephanie Plum hit the best seller list there have been numerous clones of the genre.  I know, I know, wise-cracking PI books are clones of one iconic character or another as well, so are most police detectives.  In the true spirit of ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’, publishers seem to think if one is good, 100 of the same ilk are better.  It’s getting on my nerves.  How many Da Vinci Code knock-offs can there be?  Navy SEALs are endemic in romantic suspense thanks to Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter’s series success.  And plucky heroines in Regency romance have been pretty much done to death.  Looks easy, but it’s harder than you think to get a group of characters that have the chemistry that Janet Evanovich has sustained across so many books.  Alas, most lack the je ne sais quoi that makes the Plum novels so successful.  (In all fairness, even Evanovich has lost her touch of late with plots.)

Consider the old fashioned cozy done by the grand master, Agatha Christie.  Did anyone ever write more finely crafted and subtle character studies?  That’s the atmosphere and genteel approach of Carolyn Hart’s Death On Demand series.  Some authors can breathe such life into characters and situations, it’s immaterial that the plot has a ‘been there, done that’ feel.  Elizabeth Peters has the redoubtable Amelia Peabody firmly ensconced in the cozy firmament, lushly filled with the scents and sounds of Egypt.  The Flower Shop series has always felt like it wasn’t sure whose footsteps to follow, yet wasn’t quite prepared to break new ground.  By default, the books have joined a growing pack of cozies whose most distinguishing feature is being moderately entertaining without ever being truly memorable for either its characters or its plots.

Each title in Kate Collins Flower Shop series has play on words with a floral reference in it.  Evil in Carnations is the 8th outing for Abby Knight, the drop-out law student and (forgive the pun) budding florist who just can’t seem to stop falling over dead bodies or sticking her nose into mysteries.  Despite their derivative nature, I’ve generally enjoyed these little cozies so far, A Rose from the Dead being my favorite so far.