Review: Daring by Elliott James

daring by elliott jamesFormat read: ebook purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Pax Arcana #2
Length: 387 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Date Released: September 23, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

THE WEREWOLVES HAVE A NEW LEADER…AND HE CANNOT BE STOPPED.

Something is rotten in the state of Wisconsin.

Werewolf packs are being united and absorbed into an army of super soldiers by a mysterious figure who speaks like an angel and fights like a demon. And every Knight Templar—keepers of the magical peace between mankind and magickind—who tries to get close to this big bad wolf winds up dead. No knight can infiltrate a group whose members can smell a human from a mile away…no knight except one.

John Charming. Ex knight. Current werewolf. Hunted by the men who trained him, he now might be their only salvation. But animal instincts are rising up to claim John more powerfully than ever before, and he must decide if this new leader of wolves is a madman…or a messiah.

My Review:

fearless by elliott jamesAlthough I read Daring before Fearless (review here), I’m posting it after. I’ll be packing for WorldCon in Spokane when this posts, and frankly, I needed to have stuff pre-done for as much of this week as possible. Let’s face it, the odds on my managing to write up reviews and prep posts while at Sasquan are virtually nil. And so they should be.

But about this book…Daring is the second book in the Pax Arcana, and it helps to have read the first book, the surprisingly terrific Charming (reviewed here) first. While the author does a pretty good job of summarizing the action so far, and in John Charming’s charmingly snarky voice, you always miss some of the nuance.

And Charming is damn good urban fantasy of the snarky hero/antihero school, so what’s not to love?

The concept of the Pax Arcana still feels like an awesome invention. It’s the concept that magic happens around us all the time, but because of a massive spell that the fae cast just before they left Earth, we can’t see it (unless it’s a question of survival). The fae also created a force of Pax cops – we know them best as the Knights Templar, and pretty much every other order of secret-keeping warriors that has ever been.

John Charming is a big problem for the knights, and it’s one that they created for themselves. John was trained as a knight, just like his father and his father and every other Charming before him. But John’s mother was bitten by a werewolf just before John was born, so John is also a werewolf. The Knights kill werewolves on sight, having decided somewhere in the way back that werewolves are ipso facto violations of the Pax just for existing.

Except that John breaks all the rules, because he is definitely a werewolf, but he is still bound by the geas that binds all knights to protect the Pax. If his existence were an automatic violation, he would have to off himself. But John feels no compulsion towards suicide. The powers-that-be in the Knights don’t want anyone exploring the walking contradiction that is John Charming.

This is also a story where the Knights are not necessarily good, and the monsters are not necessarily bad. They all still have all the messy motivations that regular humans do – so some on both sides are good, and some on both sides are rotten to the core. Except vampires, they’re just rotten, and sometimes rotting.

charming by elliott jamesSo when the Knights blackmail John into helping them with a werewolf problem, they do it in the nastiest way possible – they threaten the lives of all the friends that John made during the story in Charming. So John goes along, but also ties the Knights up in some interesting magical protections of his own, because John knows the Knights are not playing fair with him and his friends.

They never do.

But John’s insertion into the big werewolf clan goes even worse than the Knights’ biggest fears – because there is way more going on than their limited perspective on anyone other than themselves is able to comprehend, and because they screw thing up again while they try to screw John over again. Along with everyone else.

Escape Rating A-: This series gets better and better as it goes along. I say that and I’m in the middle of book 3 as I write this review. The trajectory is definitely upwards.

One of the fun things in this story is just how screwed up the Knights are at this point in their history. They seem to be mostly following their leaders blindly, in a world that keeps changing out from under them. They have historically relied on the Pax and their ability to confuse mundanes through chemicals or spells, but the Earth’s population boom combined with the communication power of the Internet is breaking the Pax faster than they can repair it.

Also they have decided that some creatures are automatically their enemies that aren’t necessarily, but by being targeted they become enemies. That the Knights also don’t give a damn about any normal humans that they murder in their quests does not make them any friends, either. Eventually, people start to suspect. And resent. Definitely resent.

John is a werewolf, but he is also a Knight. However, the Knights murdered his lover to get at him, and are threatening the lives of his new friends. He is not kindly disposed towards them. When the werewolf clan takes him in, he gets involved because they seem to be mostly good people, and mostly just defending themselves, and it feels good to be all of who he really is, instead of having to hide parts of himself.

But while many of the werewolves are just good people, there are some who have a much bigger (and badder) agenda, using the general werewolf population as meat-shields and other, even worse, possibilities.

As the clusterfuck reaches epic proportions, John discovers that the sides he thought he was on are not as clearly defined as he thought – and that his own origin wasn’t the unhappy accident he believed.

There is a lot going on in this installment. John has to embrace both sides of his nature, and he does it by fits and starts. Mostly by fits. He also has to learn to not just be in a group, but also lead one, and it’s a demonstrably hard lesson for a man who has spent decades as a lone wolf.

It’s also a story where all the motives are murky on all sides. John knows that the Knights mostly mean well, for select definitions of the word well, but they often do badly and definitely believe that their supposedly righteous ends justify any means, when all it means is that they lose their humanity in the process of becoming Knights, sometimes even more so than the monsters they hunt.

John’s desire to believe in the werewolf cause constantly conflicts with his cynicism. He knows its too good to be true, even when some parts of it are demonstrably true. His conflict drives him to snark and frustration at every turn.

His story also shows that even for a sometimes monster, it is much easier to get by with a little help from your friends.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Fearless by Elliott James + Giveaway

fearless by elliott jamesFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Pax Arcana #3
Length: 448 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Date Released: August 11, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

When your last name is Charming, rescuing virgins comes with the territory — even when the virgin in question is a nineteen-year-old college boy.

Someone, somewhere, has declared war on Kevin Kichida, and that someone has a long list of magical predators on their rolodex. The good news is that Kevin lives in a town where Ted Cahill is the new sheriff and old ally of John Charming.

The attacks on Kevin seem to be a pattern, and the more John and his new team follow that thread, the deeper they find themselves in a maze of supernatural threats, family secrets, and age-old betrayals. The more John learns, the more convinced he becomes that Kevin Kichida isn’t just a victim, he’s a sacrifice waiting to happen. And that thread John’s following? It’s really a fuse…

My Review:

daring by elliott jamesI rushed into Fearless immediately after finishing Daring (review next week) and I absolutely couldn’t stop reading it all day. Read at breakfast, read at lunch, read on the stationary bike, read during game saves and cut scenes. Just read.

The Pax Arcana series is gripping and gritty urban fantasy of the “hero is a snarkmaster” school of thought. Start with Charming (reviewed here). John Charming isn’t charming, but he has a cynical way of explaining what’s going on that will keep you turning pages long after you should get some sleep.

So far, at least, John Charming isn’t really very charming, and although he can be daring, at least in the “fools rush in” sense, he isn’t fearless either. It’s just that most of John’s fears are for the people around him and not for himself. He’s having a hard time admitting that he deserves a chance at happiness, or peace of mind, or even a decent night’s sleep.

In Fearless, we have the first story where John rushes in to save someone who is not a member of his merry band of tricksters, and a story where John himself does not start out as the primary bait or target.

Sheriff Ted Cahill, former Clayburg police detective (in Charming) and current Tatum County Sheriff and recently made dhampir, has invited John and his friends to help him with a missing persons cases that smells supernaturally fishy.

So John begins this story as a not-so-innocent bystander, sitting in a diner with his almost-girlfriend Sig and watching as seemingly every creepy and/or inanimate being or thing in Tatum starts zeroing in on college-student Kevin Kichida, who feels (or smells) just a little bit supernatural himself.

The trail leads John and Company to a powerful witch baking bread near Tatum, and a supernaturals-only underground fight-club in New York City. As John and Sig navigate the crowded supernatural community of New York, they try to draw just the right amount of attention from the man who runs the fight club – an old man who has spent centuries using his own descendants in an attempt to make himself a god.

Poor Kevin is his grandson, and he’s scheduled to be granddad’s next human sacrifice – unless John and Sig and their friends can get to granddad first. And end him.

Escape Rating A-: Rules are made to be broken. Or in the case of the Pax Arcana, seriously, seriously bent. One of the continuing threads in this series is the way that the bad guys, or the deluded guys, will use the letter of the Pax to get around the spirit of it.

While I’m specifically thinking of the way that the Knights have indoctrinated all of their generations to believe that werewolves and other supes are a threat to the Pax just be their existence (they actually aren’t), the whole thing gets stretched to its limits by the evil dude in Fearless.

He is always very, very careful to hide what he is doing from the normals, even as he pulls shit that makes everyone want to hurl. He never exposes the supernatural community to outsiders. He just wrecks completely magical murderous crap within it.

Breeding descendants solely for the purpose of taking over their bodies and extending your life is so disgusting that even his own ancestors have rejected him.

charming by elliott jamesThe Knights, and other so-called defenders of the Pax are often evil bystanders, and by that I mean in the sense of “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” With a lot of truly evil creatures, the Knights and their associated brethren do a whole lot of nothing, while pursuing too many people who are willing to live and let live, but stretch the Knights’ definition of people.

Like John Charming and his friends. They take on Kevin’s grandfather not because no one else can, but because no one else will.

The way that the final pieces of the plot/counterplot come together at the end is awesome, and also awesomely convoluted. One of the conventions of this series, at least so far, is that we don’t see all of the pieces until after the dust has barely settled, and John finally explains what he and his cohorts did. It lets the reader get caught up in the danger zone, without knowing how it will all turn out. I like it.

I also like John Charming and his rather motley group of friends. John is definitely out of the snarky anti-hero as hero school of urban fantasy. His self-talk and overall narrative tone have the kind of gritty cynicism that reminds me of Harry Dresden in the later Dresden Files, or or John Taylor in Simon R. Green’s Nightside. John Charming is never quite sure whether he’s mostly a good guy because he wants to be, or because he’s compelled to be, or because staying with Sig and their friends is way better for his humanity than going back to being a lone wolf.

Fearless also has the feel of a big caper story. There are a lot of moving parts, some of which are moving in realms and phases that we can’t see. In the end, those parts all come together in an explosive climax that will make you groan, and then, finally and in relief, cheer.

After the end of Fearless, the eARC included a sneak preview of the untitled fourth book in this terrific series. While I’m ecstatic to know that there IS a next book, I’m afraid to read the preview. I know it will be just too much of a tease because I already want it NOW!

Fearless Button 300 x 225

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Charming by Elliott James

charming by elliott jamesFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: urban fantasy
Series: Pax Arcana #1
Length: 366 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Date Released: September 24, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

John Charming isn’t your average Prince…

He comes from a line of Charmings — an illustrious family of dragon slayers, witch-finders and killers dating back to before the fall of Rome. Trained by a modern day version of the Knights Templar, monster hunters who have updated their methods from chainmail and crossbows to kevlar and shotguns, he was one of the best. That is — until he became the abomination the Knights were sworn to hunt.

That was a lifetime ago. Now, he tends bar under an assumed name in rural Virginia and leads a peaceful, quiet life. One that shouldn’t change just because a vampire and a blonde walked into his bar… Right?

My Review:

I’m not sure why, but when I originally picked this up, I thought it was going to be slightly cutesy. I think it might have had something to do with the whole “Charming” name. The mental trail went from Charming to Prince Charming to fairy tales to cutesy.

Having read Charming, I can see just how off-base I was, and in a good way. There is a connection between John Charming and Prince Charming, but not the way I thought. The book Charming is urban fantasy of the kick-ass anti-hero school, where the hero and monster hunter is none too sure whether or not he’s one of the monsters himself.

And the kind of dark and gritty world where bad things happen to good people every bit as often, sometimes moreso, as bad things happen to bad people. Or bad monsters. Or just bad things.

This is also a story where the vampires are very definitely the bad guys, and where the werewolves may or may not be much better.

The setup for this particular urban fantasy world is pretty awesome. It’s the Pax Arcana, and as a founding myth, it’s rather cool. The concept is that there has always been magic in the world. The supernatural has always walked (or slithered, or whatever) among us. But, and it’s a very big but, when the fae folk left our world for wherever, they left behind a powerful spell that prevents any normal human from truly seeing all that magical weirdness that happens all around us.

And being tricksy fae, they also created an all too human group of Pax enforcers and scattered them all over the world, under a magical compulsion that makes them fight the supernatural and protect mankind. It also makes them reproduce so that they make new generations of guardians to protect the world.

The internet is making their lives a bit difficult, something that will probably feature more in later books.

This story, and the series, centers on John Charming. He’s supposed to be one of those Knight-enforcer types, but something went seriously wrong. His mother was bitten by a werewolf just before he was born. He might be a werewolf. He might not, But his former colleagues have decided that whatever he is, he’s an abomination who must be eliminated. They keep trying, often with catastrophic results and collateral damage. Their neverending hunt keeps John alone and on the run.

Until a Valkyrie walks into his bar, hunting a very stupid vampire who has some surprisingly smart friends.

John finds himself in the middle of her vampire hunt, and part of a group of surprising, and surprisingly ept, volunteer monster hunters. John finds himself doing the right and wrong thing simultaneously, as he falls for the Valkyrie and drives her lover to become an even bigger monster than the ones they are hunting.

And all he wanted to do was stay safe, keep his head down, and quietly tend bar. But John Charming’s life is never that quiet.

Escape Rating B+: While the dark and gritty setting and tone of this story will remind a lot of readers of every urban fantasy they’ve ever read and loved, the creation and explanation of the Pax Arcana itself is extremely cool. It’s a combination of self-fulfilling prophecy and vicious cycle all rolled into one. One often very nasty, but still, one.

The story is told in John’s first person perspective. It gives the author an excuse to explain the way the world works, and we see John’s twisted view of his world and everything in it. In some ways, John and his world remind me of the early years of The Dresden Files, without as much descent into the male gaze. Although at least so far, John’s love life is every bit as unlucky as Harry’s.

One of the things I liked about the overall story is that it doesn’t descend into a romance, or even worse, the dreaded love triangle. It’s not that John and Sig the Valkyrie don’t have strong feelings for each other, but there’s no hearts and flowers, and certainly no HEA or even HFN. Instead, they act as catalysts in each other’s lives, making the other realize that there is shit they need to take care of before they might be ready for each other or someone else.

Of course, some of Sig’s shit nearly gets everyone killed.

I hope we see the good parts of this team again. Both Molly and Choo represent different and equally bizarre and believable ways that regular people might find themselves discovering the Pax. Sig’s story about how she enlisted Police Detective Ted Cahill by hanging him over a building and forcing him to see the magic is equally off-base and equally plausible in this world. She needs a cop, so she recruits one by force.

All things considered, Charming is a very interesting introduction to a new-to-me gritty urban fantasy world. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. And for anyone interested in snagging a copy of Charming for their very own, there is a Goodreads giveaway going on right now.

daring by elliott jamesI’m headed straight to Daring, the second book in the series, to see how John gets himself into even more trouble.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.