Smoke and Ashes – Tanya Huff

Daw Fantasy, copyright 2006, 407 pages

ISBN:  978-0-7564-0415-4

Read June 2013, at age 35

Book three of an ongoing story.  Not recommended as a starting point.

From the back cover:

Tony Foster, fledgling wizard and now a Trainee Assistant Director on Darkest Night, the syndicated vampire detective show – is hoping that the only supernatural events he’ll be caught up in are those in the script.  But that isn’t meant to be, for a Demonic Convergence is about to begin, creating weak spots through which lesser demons may enter our world.

To complicate matters, Leah, the incredibly sensual and seductive stuntwoman who free-lances for the show, is an immortal Demongate.  Should Leah die, the Demongate will open and her sex demon master will be able to have his way with the unsuspecting human race.

Can Tony – with the help of Leah, vampire Henry Fitzroy, a tabloid reporter, a Mountie, and the cast and staff of Darkest Night – halt a demonic invasion, keep Leah alive, and stave off the end of the world?

Reactions (and potential spoilers) after the break. 

Overall:

I probably shouldn’t have even started this book.  Book three of a series that I haven’t read from the beginning?  Cheesy back cover blurb?  An author I haven’t read since Jr. High? Check, check, and check. 

It might have been better if I was invested in the characters from the first two, but as it stood, I didn’t really like the main character, didn’t care about the romance arc, and didn’t fully buy into the setting, especially the hand-waving to show that our world really wasn’t going to notice the cause of random bridges exploding, giant tentacled things sprinting through downtown Vancouver, and so on. 

The last of my gripes is that the pop-culture references just irritated me.  I’m not sure why.  I like Douglas Coupland.  I shouldn’t mind pop-culture references.  But these just didn’t work for me.

The writing voice was good, and the pacing was all right after I got far enough into the book to start caring a bit about the story.  But I set it down about a third of the way through and didn’t pick it back up for several months and about six books, which is indicative of a pacing problem to me.

This isn’t really a fair review – I didn’t come into the book the way I should have.  But for the way I did… I guess it was okay by the end.  It was kind of a fun story.  But I'm not going to bother looking for the rest of the series.

Rating: 3