Author: Stephen Blackmoore
Editor: Penguin
ISBN: 110163524X
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“Stephen Blackmoore’s Dead Things is a demon punch to the face. It will make you sit up and notice. Or fall down spitting out broken molars. Don’t mind the bloody drool, either way you’ll be smiling.” —Pulp 300. This book has been deleted by request of copyrightholders. No links are available.
Stephen Blackmoore's dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts. Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it's a title Eric Carter is stuck with. He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He's turned it into a lucrative career putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. When he left LA fifteen years ago, he thought he'd never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him. But now his sister's been brutally murdered and Carter wants to find out why. Was it the gangster looking to settle a score? The ghost of a mage he killed the night he left town? Maybe it's the patron saint of violent death herself, Santa Muerte, who's taken an unusually keen interest in him. Carter's going to find out who did it, and he's going to make them pay. As long as they don't kill him first.The Death Of All Things
Author: Faith Hunter
Editor: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
ISBN: 1940709172
Size: 14,73 MB
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Lie. Cheat. Bargain. Fight. Accept. Bribe. Conquer. Evade. No matter what humanity tries, Death always wins. Or does it? Discover the answer in The Death of All Things, where twenty-one writers take their shot at the Grim Reaper with explorations of the mythical, fantastical, and futuristic bonds between life and death. Learn the cost of mortality, the perils—and joys—of the afterlife, and the potential pitfalls of immortality... Featuring stories from: K. M. Laney, Andrea Mullen, Faith Hunter, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Jason M. Hough, Julie Pitzel, Shaun Avery, Christie Golden, Leah Cutter, Aliette de Bodard, Andrew Dunlop, A. Merc Rustad, Ville Meriläinen, Amanda Kespohl, Mack Moyer, Fran Wilde, Kathryn McBride, Andrija Popovic, Jim C. Hines, Stephen Blackmoore, and Kiya Nicoll.
Author: Stephen Blackmoore
Editor: Penguin
ISBN: 0756412951
Size: 19,89 MB
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The fourth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts. Los Angeles is burning. During one of the hottest summers the city has ever seen, someone is murdering mages with fires that burn when they shouldn't, that don't stop when they should. Necromancer Eric Carter is being framed for the killings and hunted by his own people. To Carter, everything points to the god Quetzalcoatl coming after him, after he defied the mad wind god in the Aztec land of the dead. But too many things aren't adding up, and Carter knows there's more going on. If he doesn't figure out what it is and put a stop to it fast, Quetzalcoatl won't just kill him, he'll burn the whole damn city down with him.
Hungry Ghosts
Author: Stephen Blackmoore
Editor: Penguin
ISBN: 0698197690
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Stephen Blackmoore's dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts • 'Gritty, emotional and phenomenally imaginative.' —RT Reviews Necromancer Eric Carter's problems keep getting bigger. Bad enough he's the unwilling husband to the patron saint of death, Santa Muerte, but now her ex, the Aztec King of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli, has come back -- and it turns out that Carter and he are swapping places. As Mictlantecuhtli breaks loose of his prison of jade, Carter is slowly turning to stone. To make matters worse, both gods are trying to get Carter to assassinate the other. But only one of them can be telling him the truth and he can't trust either one. Carter's solution? Kill them both. If he wants to get out of this situation with his soul intact, he'll have to go to Mictlan, the Aztec land of the dead, and take down a couple of death gods while facing down the worst trials the place has to offer him: his own sins.
Author: Stephen Blackmoore
Editor: Penguin
ISBN: 0698175328
Size: 11,88 MB
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Stephen Blackmoore's dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts • 'Gritty, emotional and phenomenally imaginative.' —RT Reviews Sister murdered, best friend dead, married to the patron saint of death, Santa Muerte. Necromancer Eric Carter's return to Los Angeles hasn't gone well, and it's about to get even worse. His link to the Aztec death goddess is changing his powers, changing him, and he's not sure how far it will go. He's starting to question his own sanity, wonder if he's losing his mind. No mean feat for a guy who talks to the dead on a regular basis. While searching for a way to break Santa Muerte's hold over him, Carter finds himself the target of a psychopath who can steal anyone's form, powers, and memories. Identity theft is one thing, but this guy does it by killing his victims and wearing their skins like a suit. He can be anyone. He can be anywhere. Now Carter has to change the game -- go from hunted to hunter. All he has for help is a Skid Row bruja and a ghost who's either his dead friend Alex or the manifestation of Carter's own guilt-fueled psychotic break. Everything is trying to kill him. Nothing is as it seems. If all his plans go perfectly, he might survive the week. He's hoping that's a good thing.
Tempted
Author: Maya Banks
Editor: Harlequin
ISBN: 1460334094
Size: 10,60 MB
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From #1 NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR Maya Banks Pregnancy, Passion and the End of Innocence… Ashley Carter had saved herself for Devon Carter, and it was worth it. Now she wants their passion to last in holy matrimony. But her dreams of true love are crushed by the discovery that their marriage is another of Daddy's business deals. Her strategy: act the part of perfect wife and make Devon love her. But Devon misses the bubbly, no-holds-barred woman his wife used to be. Who is this Ashley with the steely demeanor of a society wife? And will he find a way to rekindle the fire in her eyes…especially now that she's pregnant? 'Top Pick! […] An extraordinarily moving romance with wonderfully charismatic protagonists.' —RT Book Reviews on The Tycoon's Secret Affair TEMPTED was originally published as Tempted by Her Innocent Kiss
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Sammlung
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Editor: Picador
ISBN:
Size: 10,29 MB
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Author: Dashiell Hammett
Editor: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN:
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The Motion Picture Guide
Author: Jay Robert Nash
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Something occurs to me.
Considering how long I’ve been experimenting with new novels, new series, and new authors, and considering how much I’m a fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, one would think that a slightly larger chunk of my time and attention would have gone to urban fantasy. Instead, I’ve thus far read (and reviewed) what, two, maybe three of them? Perhaps somewhere along my way through Skinwalker, Sweet Blood of Mine, and… ok, I don’t really count The Rest of Us Just Live Here as urban fantasy so much as a terrible parody of such… anyway, perhaps I was subconsciously turned off the genre by these works?
It is a sad thing, indeed, that there is so much urban fantasy out there, and it seems so little of it is actually worth our time.
Alas, it seems cruelly inevitable: when one gets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one also gets Twilight.
Dead Things, by Stephen Blackmoore, falls more into the latter category, unfortunately. It’s a step up from Skinwalker, perhaps, but that doesn’t really say much.
As the first novel in a series following the adventures of Eric Carter, it’s small wonder that it gets compared to Dresden Files. Butcher’s work is something of the standard to match these days, at least when it comes to stories featuring lone-wolf wizards for hire in the modern world.
Picture this: a wizard/mystic of some sort, who hires out their services, with some sort of distinguishing feature and a tragic past which often leaves them brooding, is given a life-or-death mission which has certain personal stakes, while greater powers lure, tempt, and seek to turn the wizard in question to their own agenda, and if the wizard both wins the day and survives this hellish ordeal, there is very little they can hope to truly gain from it, and at great cost.
That seems to be the template which is currently in widespread use. Harry Dresden, Dante Valentine, Jane Yellowrock, etc. and now I can add Eric Carter to that pile.
Eric was born into a family and small community of wizards, which mostly consists of people who are born with a talent and this determines the course of their life. In Eric’s case, he can see and interact with the dead, so he is a necromancer. That’s what grabbed my attention, at first. Most of these brooding wizard types might deal with dark magic at some point, but necromancers are still relatively uncommon as main characters. So, his magic itself is his distinguishing feature.
His tragic past involves his parents being burnt alive when they refused to pay protection money to the local crime lord of the magical community. He then killed the man, and fled the wrath of his number two, who took over the business. Eric ran and ran and never stopped running. Needing to make his way in the world, he became much stronger and hired out his services. He has taken out some pretty nasty things, acting much like an agent of justice on behalf of the dead.
I will say, here, I liked how Eric saw his job and calling in life. He has a relationship with the dead, the victims of evil beings, large and small, and he cares about them. At the same time, though, he could care a little bit more about living people. If he gave as much consideration to living, breathing people as he does to hungry, vengeful ghosts, then he’d be a freaking saint. For instance, he does more for his own sister after she is murdered than he did in the fifteen years since he ran away.
![Dead Dead](http://www.rebellionstore.com/images/covers/9781849978774.jpg)
That, by the way, is the driving plot: Eric is going about business as usual, then he learns that his sister has been murdered, and he goes home to find her killer. And there we have the life-or-death mission with personal stakes.
As for the greater power trying to turn Eric to its service, that would be a Mayan goddess of the dead, now called Santa Muerta by her modern-day followers. She has heard of him, followed his storied career of destruction, and become infatuated. I can assure you, if it’s bad to be in love with death, it is infinitely worse to have death be in love with you. While I did enjoy having this story’s “greater being” be interested in a mortal because of what he’s done, instead of what he is prophesied to do (Dresden) or because she’s hot (Yellowrock), it felt like he gave in to her allure far too quickly and easily. Especially when the entire situation turns out to be a trap designed specifically to drive Eric to Santa Muerta, and I saw it coming.
That last is a particular point against this novel: it was predictable. The mild romantic drama, the casual hook-up with a gorgeous girl who turns out to be a mole, the old enemy returning, the part where pretty much everyone dies… really, the only surprise was at the end, when Eric decided to stay in town instead of leaving again. Why, exactly, did he do that? I didn’t follow.
In summary: Dead Things really was entertaining in some parts, but by and large it was just kind of… “meh.” I’m hoping the next few urban fantasy books in my “to read” pile are a bit more well crafted than this.
Rating: 6 stars out of 10, just barely this side of neutral, and that much only because I liked the magic system.
Grade: D-Minus.
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