Darker Angels

In Unclean Spirits, the first novel featuring Jayne Heller, she discovered her late uncle's demon-fighting legacy, a fortune and potential powers of her own. As she continues on a quest of self-discovery, she encounters friends and foes, learning how to work with both and keep both at arm's length in Darker Angels. Because Jayne has kept her uncle's phone, she gets a call from a someone who knew him -- and who needs help. Jayne and her band of hunters, who gathered around her in the opening novel, head to post-Katrina New Orleans to help former FBI agent Karen Black. Once there, this "don't want to be the Scoooby gang" faces individual and group moments of truth, partly from the voodoo-inspired threat and partly from their own reluctance to face facts about how these former lovers now depend on each other. Karen is everything Jayne thinks she is not -- self-confident, knowledgeable and kick-ass in battle. But why does she think she needs help from, if not Uncle Eric, then from his niece? And why does the youngest member of the Voodoo Heart Temple know more about Jayne than Jayne herself? Hanover's story is a layered portrait of a young woman coming into her own. Jayne is coping with the new-found knowledge of her favorite uncle's wealth and what he really was. She is dealing with continuing a relationship with a man she is attracted to, but feels she needs to keep her distance because of a former relationship of his that hasn't quite been finished. Her other new friends, also employees, have baggage of their own and are accustomed to doing their own thing even though they consider themselves a team now. New Orleans and the emotional price in prolonged recovery plays a subtle role in this story. The voodoo aspect is handled not with tackiness, but with trepidation and respect. The city receives a love letter from Hanover. Although it's not known if other Jayne Heller novels are in the works, they would be welcome. The characters have compelling storylines that have not yet come to fruition, and Hanover (fantasy author Daniel Abraham) is very talented at having their exploits serve their inner journeys. Both Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels make The Black Sun Daughter's story well worth reading.

Fun stuff and a nice sequel, the gang's all back plus some. The novel is a bit more sexually graphic than the first one, though only in one or two places. All in all, for fiction fluff, this is a pretty nice sequel. I will be buying any more in the series that comes out!

Plot Summary: Jayné and gang have been traveling the world, visiting the extensive properties that were bequeathed to her by her late Uncle Eric. An old associate of Eric's rings one night, asking for help with a demon rider in New Orleans. Jayné jumps right in, ignoring her own exhaustion, and gets eye-ball deep in demon politics. The woman who called, Karen Black, is an ex-FBI agent who oozes confidence and Jayné develops a bad case of hero-worship-envy. Her team splinters and Jayné realizes her critical error just in time to try and reverse the damage. It seems like every time I turn around, another author has chosen post-Katrina New Orleans as the setting for his/her urban fantasy. I've never visited there myself, but I almost feel like I know the place just from all the stories I've read. Jayné even had beignets and chicory coffee at the Café du Monde, which is pretty traditional for heroines passing through. I'm being cheeky now, but seriously, the city has become a literary darling. It has the right mix of despair, decay, magic, and hope. It's a good place to beat someone down, and watch them fight back in triumph, which is pretty much what happens to Jayné. While I enjoyed this one, it didn't have quite the same sparkle as the first novel, Unclean Spirits: Book One of the Black Sun's Daughter. I think I know why too. My favorite character was MIA. The rough, gruff, tough-talking vampire Midian did not make an appearance, and I thought that Jayné's team was diminished as a result. It certainly cut down on the humorous moments in the story. I was also feeling lukewarm about Jayné's awkward non-relationship with Aubrey. I think she's being a twit for messing around with her friends like that, but she is imminently human and makes more than her share of mistakes. This fantasy series is on my `need to read list' because the characters are intriguing and Hanover writes well. It's easy to overlook the quality of the storytelling until I'm slogging through something vague or bland, and then it's easy to appreciate. If Hanover could just bring Midian back, I'd be totally content.

She inherited her Uncle Eric's estate consisting of money and property along with his mission to free the human horse possessed by demons or the loas. By accepting his legacy skeptical Jayne Heller admits there is a hell of a lot of supernatural communities out there; some of which are extreme evil. Meanwhile former FBI Agent Karen Black has been searching for a serial killing horse rider Legba who picked his next host horse Sabine, the granddaughter of Amelie (who he now rides) whose life is nearing an end. The loa starts taking over Sabine but Karen hopes to thwart its ambition. Jayne and her posse travel from Athens (Greece not Georgia) to New Orleans to help Jayne in her quest to end the serial killing horse rider's reign of terror. When she arrives she notices the city is arising from the watery grave of Katrina while the belief in voodoo remains strong. Karen leads the demonic hunt and when she is near her goal she orders Jayne to leave. Realizing she has been tricked Jayne informs Karen she will remain to rid the city of the paranormal serial killing horse and gets in between a battle with one decent and one evil loa. DARKER ANGEL, the second Black Sun's Daughter urban fantasy (see UNCLEAN SPIRITS) is a fascinating and entertaining thriller in which it is difficult to separate the good loas from the bad; just ask Jayne. Determined to follow in her uncle's brave footsteps and encouraged by his voice to do so, Jayne continues his war to dispatch the malevolent ones back to where they came from. Ignorant and prone to error, she learns the family business while under fire. Fans will root for Jayne in her invisible war against demons, loas, and who knows what else M.L.N. Hanover will dream up. Harriet Klausner

***SPOILER WARNING*** ***SPOILER WARNING*** ***SPOILER WARNING*** ***SPOILER WARNING*** My inner curmudgeon nearly set _Darker Angels_ aside at about the halfway point. "I don't get this book!" said the curmudgeon. "The voodoo's all wrong. Legba isn't an evil serial killer! The good guys' plan doesn't quite add up, and is pretty unethical besides. And the interpersonal drama just ate the plot for lunch!" "Sit down and shut up," said M.L.N. Hanover. "I'm telling a story here." OK, so I've never met M.L.N. Hanover, and he didn't literally say that, but he might as well have. Because just as I was about to give up on _Darker Angels_, he threw in some twists that made me realize I was looking at it all wrong. I must have been led astray by the extremely linear plot of _Unclean Spirits_. I was expecting this plot to be similar in structure, and so I wasn't asking the right questions. I shouldn't have been asking, "What did Hanover do wrong?" I should have been asking, "What might be going on within the plot to cause all these things to happen?" I think I also forgot that Jayné, despite being a narrator whose voice I really enjoy, is not a perfectly reliable narrator. She has biases and blind spots, and she doesn't understand everything she experiences. Jayné's preconceived notions got in the way of solving the mystery -- and so did mine. _Darker Angels_ is much less linear than _Unclean Spirits_, and it's much better for it. The plot revolves around a voodoo spirit who manipulates its hosts into committing horrific murders. Jayné is hired by former FBI agent Karen Black, an acquaintance of her late uncle's, to help stop this spirit from killing a young girl. We visit New Orleans and see both the destruction left over from Katrina and the tenacity of its residents. The plot is full of great twists. Hanover yanked the rug out from under my feet at one point, and maybe I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. It's when the pieces start to fall into place that you realize just how carefully Hanover set them up. I really enjoyed _Darker Angels_s and I think it's safe to say I'm hooked on The Black Sun's Daughter. Jayné continues to be a delight; she's no master strategist, but she has a lot of compassion, and she has more courage than she thinks she does. And to heck with the inner curmudgeon. By the end, this had become a "set the alarm early so you can read before work" kind of book, and I finished it with a smile on my face and maybe a few tears in my eyes.