The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson

I’ll be honest – I didn’t have very high expectations when I started this novel. This book fits squarely into that sub-genre residing between horror and fantasy, with a touch of erotica, starring vampires, werewolves, and other baddies with an ass-kicking femme fatale with a dark past and problems in her love life getting thrown into a truly shocking and horrifying situation. These books just aren’t my thing – often too cliché, predictable, and gratuitous for my taste. So, it was very pleasant surprise that I enjoyed this book.

The Scent of Shadows is not a vampire book or a book about any monster we’ve read about before. Pettersson takes her time to introduce something new – basically a supernatural race of good guys and bad guys fighting it out behind the scenes of us mere mortals. We don’t have pantheon of gods and monsters – just a bunch of super-humans battling in the age old good versus evil struggle, and what better place for this battle than Las Vegas. Fans of Vegas will enjoy this new side of Sin City from an insider’s point of view.

Joanna Archer is the definition of a disturbed, independent woman with a number of issues to work out. Subconsciously searching for the man that raped and left her for dead when she was a child, Joanna has become removed from family and friends, having only her camera and martial arts as support. Let’s cut to it – bad things happen and in the process she learns that she is more than human – she is a born superhero that has been long hidden from both the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys are in danger of loosing it all and Joanna is the key to their survival or elimination.

In a bit of strange effort, Pettersson has attempted to combine this good versus evil struggle with comics. The activities of the Zodiac Troup 175 (yes, that really is what they are called) are mirrored in comic books – two sets, one for the shadow and one for the light (and you can’t read the opposing team’s comics). This sets up one of the more amusing and scenes in the book where our beautiful femme fatale squares off against a bunch of comic store geeks. The problem is that this aspect of the story was half developed at best – it needed to be fully fleshed out or left out altogether. As written it amounts to basically nothing but filler.

Yes, this book is as clichéd as it sounds. It’s predictable too. The writing is inconsistent – the first sentence of the book alone was almost enough to make me stop reading. The thing is that in spite of all that, I couldn’t put the book down. Pettersson sets the mood and grips you, not letting go. I wanted to know what happened next – I needed to know. Joanna turns out to be a fascinating character, and even with what little we see of others, they have a bit of depth as well.

The Scent of Shadows is a book that can’t be put down, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, with the shortcomings mentioned above, and a few not mentioned, it only partially succeeds. Fans of Kim Harrison and Laurell K. Hamilton will likely not only not notice, but absolutely love this book. For me, it gets 6.5 out of 10. I really wanted to rate it much lower, but I can’t deny that I enjoyed it and literally couldn’t put it down. As I said initially, it was a pleasant surprise.

Of course a book like this is literally made for sequels. While it stands well on its own, much is left unresolved for future adventures. The Taste of Night will be this continuation, being released shortly after The Scent of Shadows.

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

Vampires! I’ll admit, like many people out there, I do enjoy a good vampire book from time to time. Guilty Pleasures is Hamilton’s first installment in a series of books starring Anita Blake, Vampire Slayer. The books are decently popular, so I decided to give it a read.

Imagine the world we exist in, however, vampires, lycanthropes (from werewolves to wererats), zombies, ghouls, etc. are very real creatures. Vampires in the US have a bad rap, but they are gaining some civil rights – it’s now illegal to ‘murder’ a vampire. The city of St. Louis has uneasily embraced its undead inhabitants, making them a major tourist attraction – visit a vampire strip club or the circus of the damned or join the vampire church – no abstract concepts of immortality here, join and you can ‘live’ forever.

Anita Blake is an animator – someone who has the power to raise the dead. She is also a vampire hunter, contracted by the police to kill ‘problem’ vampires. In an ironic twist, Anita, the ‘executioner’, has been hired by both the police and the city's most powerful master vampire to find who has been killing some of the city’s most powerful vampires.

Anita is both strong and vulnerable, and one hell of a cynic. Vampires are soulless, powerful creatures, and Anita would love to see the world free of them. Not only is she working for vampires under the threat of the death and dismemberment of a friend (and herself), but someone is trying to kill her; things have been better. She is uneasy, scared, and angry. And when she’s angry, even a thousand-year old master vampire should take notice.

Guilty Pleasures is a quick, fun read. While it is certainly an ‘R-rated’ book, it is not the sex-filled book many seem to imply about Hamilton’s books (of course, I haven’t read any of her others). The atmosphere is dark, dirty, and a bit perverted, but Hamilton balances this well Blake’s cold wit and sarcasm, though it can be forced at times. The writing suffers from the typical awkwardness of a first book, but not so much that it can’t be overlooked.

On my 10-point rating scale, where 5 is a take-it or leave-it book, and 10 is unsurpassed, Guilty Pleasures rates a 6 to 6.5. I enjoyed this book, and will read the next installment of Anita Blake, Vampire Slayer: The Laughing Corpse. Guilty Pleasures is not a book of great depth, just a fun, quick, horrific romp through a world of monsters helmed by the darkly funny Anita Blake.