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.

ISBN-13: 9780451462640

One of the biggest complaints I have with urban fantasy as a whole is that it tends to lean very far into the paranormal and make realism second place. Not so with Ann Aguirre’s latest offering, Blue Diablo, which, put simply, is To Cast a Deadly Spell meets Commando.

Corine Solomon is a woman on the run. She’s settled in Mexico City and managed to keep up a life as a shopkeeper for eighteen months when her ex-boyfriend, one of the many people she’s hiding from, walks in her shop door. She still isn’t over Chance, not what he put her through or her love for him. But none of it matters because Chance asks for Corine for the one thing he knows she’ll give–her help finding his kidnapped mother.

Corine isn’t the only person whose past has caught up with them, but she is the only one who can help because Min, Chance’s mother, has left a trail of clues that only Corine’s gift of psychometry (psychic reading of events through objects) can decipher.

Blue Diablo stands out from the genre, not just because it wholly encompasses “bad guys” outside of the serial killer and supernatural varieties, or because of its higher than typical body count. One of the biggest stand out features of this book is the cast of realistic, almost entirely minority characters and non-Celtic/European magic mythos.

In comparison to Aguirre’s other books (Grimspace and Wanderlust) Blue Diablo is a true blend of the genres that make urban fantasy; fantasy, mystery, romance and horror, whereas the former are science fiction with romantic elements. Blue Diablo’s heroine and hero are no less emotionally tortured, in either their pasts or their feelings for each other.

Aguirre likes the devastated hero, and the heroine whose power costs something. Readers who like mixed blessings in their magic and desperate, delicious heroes will find a lot to like in Aguirre’s books. Nothing comes easy, if at all. Not defeating the bad guy, or winning the day or even getting the guy/girl. It makes Blue Diablo not an effortless read, but a tension-filled exciting tale nonetheless.