Down Time (Emma Merrigan, No. 4)

Emma Merrigan woke up in the night terrified the night before her library director, Gene Shonneker, gave his resignation. Now she knows why. The new director appears to be planning to do some major shakeups. She's putting in more hours than she cares to think. "You look horrible," her mother, Eleanor, who's used the magic of her _wyrd_ to remove her own aging and looks more like a college co-ed than the mother of a 50-year-old daughter states. "You need a vacation. I'll pay for a Carribean cruise." Things only get worse from there. I imagine the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B" playing.... First verse, I'm sharing a cabin with my mother--who looks and dresses like my daughter--and I'm responsible for her, too! Second verse, there's food everywhere and I'm getting fatter and fatter! Third verse, my waitress is cursed and I can't get to _audela_ to help her because of some stupid rule about going to the Netherlands to moot curses when you're moving. Fourth verse, migraines--bad meds, too much food, sun, and Calypso music. Fifth verse, can't sleep and manage to be just at the spot to see a crew member effected by the curse take a dive. And on and on.... There is some hope for Emma and the storyline. Once she finally gets off the ship, her mother Eleanor takes her to the Atlantis curia to get help for her eye. (I think that was Verse 7) I'm really hoping the future storylines will include more about this group.

I have to agree that I too love these books. I can only conclude that Lynn Abbey wanted to write a cruise off on her income tax as research for a book but didn't have a very good time. Emma, whose life is not going well mainly because her job as a librarian is under seige with shakeups in management, agrees to go on a cruise with her mother. Then she is talked into driving all the way to Florida. After they are on the ship she drinks both red wine and champagne-- bad idea for a migraineur! At their first port of call, she and her mother get lost. Emma's headache gets worse-- Arrgh, a migraine in the tropics! And I recognized those red pills that the author gave her. They are incredibly ineffective. No wonder it was taking her days to shake it. Come into the 21st Century Em! Things continue to go downhill. Souvenirs are tacky, there's an employee with a curse on board, Emma witnesses a suicide, there's food 24 hours a day every day. And that headache keeps coming back. Then just when it seems they are going to get to spend a few fun days at the world of the mouse, fate strikes again. Oh yes, fate also has them driving through Atlanta on the interstate. Abbey seems to be losing her focus on the story arc but for Emma's fans (would can sympathize with the fact that given tremendous power she removes the gray from her hair) this is an interesting few days in her life.

I just can't get over how realistic Emma is. Her mother is an idiot, her lover is a ghost. She gets talked into doing all kinds of things she knows she shouldn't and really doesn't want to do. But she brings us along. I'm always waiting for the next one. While you're waiting try some of Abbey's other books. You'll love them.

Fifty years ago, Emma Merrigan's mother Eleanor abandoned her newborn baby and her husband and it is only recently that they reconciled. Both Emma and Eleanor are hunters, going into the wasteland to destroy curses and rogues (giant curses). Eleanor was imprisoned by powerful curses and upon returning to the mundane world, she could pass as Emma's daughter. The immortal hunters never age as they possess the power to appear younger even though Emma chooses to look her real age of fifty. The two women take a Caribbean cruise hoping to bridge the breach that exists between them but Emma has a headache most of the time. She sees a cursed woman on the wait staff, a person who has seen the atrocities committed in Serbia. Emma has the ability to plunge through time and stop a curse before it begins. When she gets off the boat she does exactly that and finds a young boy without an adult to take care of him since Emma took away his primary caretakers in order to end the curse. He is either a hunter or a rouge but either way he sets up a loop that prevents Emma from returning to her own time and she must hope that someone from the mundane world come into the wasteland looking for her to guide her home. DOWN TIME is an interesting urban fantasy featuring a heroine who is smart enough to know she doesn't have all the answers and is savvy enough to listen to people who have more of them. The wastelands are an interesting place, a barren dimension with a magnetic sky where curses and rogues abound. Emma is obsessed with destroying as many as she can to make the world a better place. Lynn Abbey is a spectacular urban fantasist. Harriet Klausner