Fangs For The Fantasy

Kate, the demon hunting soccer-mom, is back, juggling play dates for a toddler, her teenaged daughter, her husband and his political machinations with the complexities of hunting and killing demons.

With the demons yet again coming to San Diablo, Kate is faced a more evolved and ongoing threat as well as the fallout from her daughter finally learning the truth about Kate and her secret double life. Of course, once she understands she has a lot of questions – and Kate isn’t sure how many she can answer, especially in relation to Eric, her dead husband who apparently had a life and machinations he kept secret from her as well. A secret that got him killed – and may still have considerable bearing on what the demons are plotting today.

I said before that this series had an interesting gimmick, but that it couldn’t live on the gimmick any longer. While it is intriguing and new to have a housewife as a demon hunter, juggling her life and commitments while still trying to run her secret life killing demons, it’s a great hook but it’s not the basis for a full book series and could quickly grow tired.

And this book avoided that. We have a much more focused plot with a lot less side distractions or her mundane life being described in as much detail. It’s still there, certainly, and remains hectic but we don’t have as much page time dedicated to these tasks. Instead, we have a much more involved and winding plot. The demons are back again and up to something but there’s a definite meta developing with their plot line, something to tie in the whole series in an ongoing devious scheme that brings all of these demons to this town that Kate chose because it was safe from demons.

In addition to the demons developing more into an ongoing threat rather than one off encounters, we have considerable increased complexity with Kate telling her daughter what she does and her (and her dead husband’s) past. Not only does this free up some of the familial duties but it also adds a whole new dimension to the story with Kate’s worry about Ally wanting to join in the fighting, with her concern about the demons targeting her and Kate’s constant battle as to exactly how much she should tell her daughter

Which is, in turn, complicated by David, the freelance hunter who may or may not have Eric’s (her first husband and Ally’s father) soul inside him. This is a wonderfully complex and emotional storyline with Kate torn between the man she used to love, the man she used to hunt with and the father of her daughter, and her current husband and father of her son – who she does love, but who doesn’t know her past or about her hunting demons. It’s a wonderful, rich, nuanced conflict that adds a lot of depth to the book.

Throw in, on top of that, Kate investigating exactly what Eric was up to and we have a lot of plot here – but it’s all interwoven. She can’t investigate Eric without touching on issues of what to tell Ally and without considering the whole David/Eric issue nor without looking at the ongoing demonic scheme that is apparently involved in San Diablo and throughout the Forza. It’s really nicely done to have all of these plot lines touch each other, even though they’re approached separately.

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Kate is back, juggling the life of a soccer mom and now a full time demon hunter – dedicated to ridding the city of infernal monsters and keep it safe for her children. In between doing the shopping, taking her daughter to the mall, getting her 3 year old in child care and ensuring there’s a meal on the table. Add in that her husband is running for office which means she hardly ever sees him as he runs around for campaign donations – and she’s inevitably dragged into important social occasions she’s neither interested in, nor has time for. It’s hectic. It’s even more hectic when the only person who knows about her demon hunting secret is her best friend, Laura.

And the demons are certainly present – forcing her to kill one and leave its body in her daughter’s school, which is always awkward. The demons are plotting something, something that could invoke the worst of the worst demons out there – and something that may easily catch up her daughter in the process. Finding the answers and protecting her family is only complicated by messages from her ex-husband’s past, a secret she never knew, her own daughter’s curiosity – and a new hunter in town. One without the ties she’s used to – but one who knows far too much about her, and her dead husband Eric’s past.

This book is very fluffy – which makes it a fun, light read. Kate’s fumbling around her life is pretty amusing (albeit not always funny) and the contrast between fighting demons, stabbing them in the eye and having to dispose of the body on the one hand and then facing down snarly, unpleasant PTA members on the other is jarring in all the best ways. This book also added some more on to the world building with the imprisoned demons and the plot to release them which adds a level of what’s at stake and the consequences of failure. But in some ways I think the light hearted, fun nature of the book detracts from any sense of epic; it’s not heavy enough or gritty enough for the horror of the consequences to come through.

The only problem I have with the writing is probably unsolvable without damaging he book’s premise. The whole point of this series, the thing that makes it novel and unique, is that Kate is a harassed mother trying to juggle her parenting and family duties with her duties as a demon hunter. To maintain that theme, we have to see Kate through all her juggling of kids, child care, PTA dramas, volunteering etc etc and it’s not very interesting or engaging. But if you cut it, then you lose the entire theme and purpose of the book itself. But this also makes me look at the series itself and wonder at how it continues for another 5 books because the gimmick is feeling stale round the edges

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Coming in at 188 pages, Torn is a very short book that somehow still manages to feel extremely long.  When we last left Lily, she had discovered that rather than working on the side of the good, she had actually been tricked into opening the 9th gate.   If that were the only problem with being fooled that would be bad enough, but her sister Rose’s body has been invaded by a demon.  Johnson makes it clear that he the price of Rose’s freedom is the Oris Clef - the key which throws open all of the gates to hell.  Unfortunately another demon faction also wants the key.  Deacon Camphire the demon who Lily feels inextricably attracted to wants her to abandon the search for the Oris Clef in favour of finding the one key that will lock all the doors. At stake for him, is the possibility of redemption.

The only thing Lily knows for sure is that she must find a way to save Rose.  This is her mantra repeatedly and yet she seems to be quite willing to palm Rose off on others.  She feels the urge to hunt a demon, she dumps Rose. She has a mission to go on to retrieve part of the key, she dumps Rose.  It’s easy to see why Deacon could suggest that maybe Rose is disposable after all.

Lily moves from one location to another attempting to gather the pieces of the key but the archangel Gabriel is stalker her.  At first, she assumes that he is a demon because of the tattoos on his face but Deacon explains that he is heaven’s warrior.  Can Lily save her sister, and stop the gates from being opened -does she even want to?

In the first book of this series, there was a lot of world building that was absent in this story.  Unfortunately, without this world building, all that is challenging about this story is erased.  One of the prominent challenges in was classism.  Though the story itself was not original, I enjoyed the fact that Kenner went of her way to detail how one’s class location greatly effects one’s life chances.  Considerin that this story is extremely erased - no characters of colour, no disabled and no GLBT characters the focus on class at least added a real world element. It was further intriguing because class based issues are something that rarely gets discussing in this genre, making it one of the best things about Tainted.  When Kenner stopped discussing class, she effectively got rid of the best thing about this series.  Now there is absolutely nothing to differentiate it from all of the other books in this genre.

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Katie is a suburban housewife. She has a 14 year old daughter and a 2 year old son and a husband who loves her dearly – and she spends her life holding her family together. It’s hard work, but she meets each days challenges (more of less) successfully.

She even manages her husband’s political ambitions, being called upon to host elaborate dinner and cocktail parties (often at ridiculously short notice); very essential to get all the proper endorsements. And, of course, she and her daughter are still dealing with the ongoing grief of losing her first husband that has never quite gone away. It’s an involved life.

And then the demons show up. Once, she worked with the Vatican, she was a demon hunter, a trained killer, lethal fighter who sought out the demonic and slew it, banishing it from the world. But she’s retired and hasn’t fought in over a decade – she certainly never thought she’d have to fight in San Diablo, which she had chosen for its lack of demons.

Now she has demons threatening her family and, worse of all, a higher demon that is seeking to destroy the whole city and she’s the only hunter spare. No matter how rusty her skills, how frustrating the investigation or how difficult it is to schedule demon slaying in between play dates, Katie has to step up.

One thing I love about this book is how much it makes it clear that being a stay-at-home mother is not, in any way, laziness or easiness. Societally we have a strong level of contempt for “women’s work” and a woman who doesn’t work but stays at home with the kids is often regarded as being lazy or somehow failing. Indeed, housework and childcare about both labour that is highly devalued and disrespected despite how essential it is. Katie spends her life bouncing from appointment to appointment – ferrying children about their lives, caring for her toddler who constantly demands her attention, cooking, cleaning, advising and observing her daughter, dealing with the sudden parties her ambitious-politician husband keeps throwing at her. And she alternates this with constant guilt and pressure that is so often understated – is she the perfect politician’s wife? Is she the perfect hostess? She put the baby down in front of the television, is that bad parenting? Did she tell Allie the right thing? It’s a really good representation of the pressure she’s under.

Then throw in demon hunting and she’s well and truly snowed under – the constant battle to fit in all she has to do in her normal life and still do what’s necessary to stop Goramesh is really well portrayed and pretty uncommon in the genre. Usually, an Urban Fantasy protagonist is able to dedicate their full lives to the mystical drama du jour. If they’re overwhelmed it’s because the mystical drama requires a lot of work, or they have several mystical dramas at once. It’s rare for it to actually be their own home lives that intrude on their supernatural lives.

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Lily Carlyle has had a very hard life.  Her mother died when she was on 14 years old, leaving her with a little sister to take care of and a drunken stepfather who quickly became to loss in his grief to be of any real help.  Lily made a promise to her little sister Rose that she would always keep her safe and if this meant lying, cheating and stealing to the bills, then so be it.  When Rose is raped and her attacker was released on a legal technicality, he begins stalking her.  Lily remembers her promise to protect her sister, and if that means committing murder to ensure that Rose was safe, then she is more than willing to do it.

What Lily does not count on, is that her act of vengeance leading to her death. Lily dies knowing that with all of her past actions, that there is only one final destination for her - hell.  Lily is however offered a chance of redemption, when she is placed into the body of Alice Purdue and told that she is girl who is prophesied to ensure that the demons amassing at the ninth gate are never able to escape.  She says yes to this challenge, because the alternative is an eternity of damnation, and so with the help of  Clarence and her fighting coach, an incubus named Zane, Lilly/Alice sets out to save the world and in the process keep her promise to her little sister.

As with all plans, things don’t run smooth for Lily.  Each time she kills a demon she takes on their essence and this means that she inherits all of the dark passions, crimes and urges.  Lily is terrified that is becoming that which she is seeking to eradicate.

With Armageddon looming, Lily also find herself deeply attracted to a demon named Deacon.  It appears that Demon and Alice had some sort of arrangement and he quickly surmises that though Lily now looks like Alice something is very wrong.  There is an extremely strong attraction between the two of them which Lily has great difficulty reconciling.  How is it possible that the chosen one - a demon killer, can be attracted to a demon.  Is possible that things are not as black and white as she has been told?  Do demons possess the ability to be an agent of good?

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