Hell Fire by Ann Aguirre

Corine Solomon Book #2

ISBN: 9780451463241

I bought this book.

It’s no secret that science fiction and fantasy often strives to be socially relevant, to a make a point about our future, our society or just the human penchant for quests and underdogs. Often slipping through the cracks of those books deemed of literary merit, urban fantasy at its worst is considered a pornographic bestiary with a bitchy female lead. At its best though urban fantasy is becoming a microcosm, where the rest of the genre is a wide angled view, focusing on how people deal with tragedy, often amplified by supernatural complications to the already dark nature of the world.

On the surface Ann Aguirre’s latest UF novel, Hell Fire (book two in her Corine Solomon series) is the story of a woman torn between two men who travels home to find the truth about her mother’s tragic death. Underneath it’s a story about being unable to go home again and trying to face down trauma and emotions themselves in an effort to gain justice at best, and control at the least. The complication of Hell Fire is that Corine isn’t just trying to figure out what evil lurks in the small (and, mysteriously, completely unknown) town she grew up in, she’s trying to fight her own overwhelming emotional tempest when it comes to her mother’s murder and her upraising. There’s also the fact that literally everything in Kilmer is working against Corine and her crew, and she starts the book so far out of the loop of the plot that for a while she has to grab at strings and bear through grim and vague warnings instead of proper clues.

Compared to the break neck speed of the mystery in many urban fantasies, and the heavy traditional romantic tone to others, readers stuck in a rut that demands a speedy, linear, clues-falling-into-the-hero’s-lap plot and a resolution to the romance right now will find less enjoyment in Corine’s stories than others. Readers should also be prepared for some heavy horror influences, in the form of creepy lost-in-the-woods scenes and a more sinister monster than today’s vampires and werewolves offer. But if you love in urban fantasy why I do, the tales of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people dealing with both personal tragedy and a world spiraling out of control under the influence of the unpredictable addition of magic and magical beasties, then you’ll find Hell Fire emotional, dark, heroic and an excellent read.