Deadtown by Nancy Holzner

Reviewed for MonsterLibrarian.com

Ace, 2009

ISBN: 978-0441018130

Available: mass market and digital

Deadtown depicts a world where parahumans have no civil rights and are forced to live in one area of town, to the point where they have to have permits to leave that area of town. The lead character is Victory Vaughn, the latest in a recent line of Welsh true shape shifters, and a demon hunter. Her kind-of-boyfriend is the lead civil rights attorney for Paranormal Americas, and a werewolf. When one of her clients is found dead Vicky realizes that the Hellion that killed her father is now hunting her. She has to balance her personal life with dealing with a scientist who wants to make her a lab rat, and protecting a client who by all rights she should want dead. Somehow, she must also find it in herself to stop the demon she fears.

Deadtown has all the makings of a good urban fantasy, but falls flat in the execution. Most of the characters are either blah, or completely annoying. Holzner has created an interesting world with her oppressive society, but the plot doesn’t revolve around making things better. The characters consistently make choices that are stupid, dangerous and even violent. It’s hard to connect with the people in this tale, making it a lackluster example of urban fantasy. Deadtown is not without its charms, so collections that service voracious paranormal readers—or those with no taste for the full-on erotic scenes in other books—will still have a place for Deadtown in their collections.

Contains: Violence, language