Embers [Mass Market Paperback]

Not your average urban fantasy--and that's a good, good thing. It's refreshing to see a character with a real, serious day job--and not the kind that flaunts her feminine wiles. Anya's an arson investigator and has to wear the big protective gear and such. Also, Anya's "paranormal" side takes a creative and fresh look at the vast possibilities of this genre. The world and supporting characters that Bickle's created here feel real--like people you might meet later today. People who have their own motives, personalities, and flaws. Anya's a great character with so much potential I'm eager to see where Bickle takes her next. What's more, Bickle has given her character a sidekick (a fire elemental) that will charm you and make you want one of your own. I loved Sparky. In fact, I /want/ a Sparky. Where do I get one?

EMBERS has a fantastically gritty cover from the talented Chris McGrath, a paranormally enhanced version of Detroit, and a unique supernatural concept for its main character. With so much going for it, I feel like I should have liked this book more. The blurb sounded exactly like the kind of urban fantasy stories I love...but I struggled almost from the beginning to connect with both the characters and plot.

By day, Anya is an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department. After hours, she's a member of the Detroit Area Ghost Researchers. As a Lantern, Anya has the ability to consume ghosts like a supernatural vacuum cleaner. Her formidable skill comes with a nasty side effect: acid like burns left on her chest after each ghost she "eats." She and the hodgepodge crew of D.A.G.R members (including a wedding cake designer/witch and an elderly demonologist that reminded me of Professor Xavier from X-Men) bust ghosts, exorcise demons, and keep the city safe from the seedy supernatural elements that lurk in the shadows.

I had a big problem with Anya's two love interests in EMBERS: Brian the `nice' tech guy from D.A.G.R who has been interested in her for ages. And then there's Drake, the serial arsonist who is plotting to incinerate Detroit. Neither the `nice' guy or the psycho appealed to me as romantic leads. Brian was fairly innocuous and about as romantically compelling as cardboard, but Drake was a mass murderer with major creep factor. There are other factors in the story that propelled Anya's relationship with Drake which I won't divulge, but I still found the attraction between them to be very forced and unrealistic.

I did like Anya's familiar, a fire elemental salamander named Sparky. He's more like an invisible magical Saint Bernard who gets jealous when guys hit on Anya, sleeps with a glowworm, and has a mischievous addiction to electricity. The writing itself is also good, I just didn't find the story to be especially interesting. Every chapter started off with a great opening sentence that devolved into a generic chapter plot wise.

Plenty of other reviewers loved this book. I envy them for it, but I just couldn't get into it. I did like Laura's writing style, which is why I'm looking forward to her other series debut Dark Oracle written as Alayna Williams later this summer. I'll probably pass on the next Anya Kalinczyk book, Sparks when it comes out August 31, 2010.

Sexual Content: References to sex. A brief, mildly graphic sex scene.

When I first saw the description for this book I was intrigued. I hadn't read anything like it before, so, yay, unique setting! The world of Lanterns, ghosts, and elemental spirits was an interesting one. I liked the thought of the DAGR group, but the thought was much more exciting than the execution. I'll get to that though.

I appreciated the fact that Anya questioned what she did as a Lantern. She did it, yes, but not without questioning the morality of it. Who was she to interfere with the afterlife? Where did they go after she finished with them? As those were the very same questions running through my mind I liked that she had them too. Anya's elemental, Sparky, was my favorite character. The description of him was so cute. He had a glow worm toy and didn't like to sleep alone.

I liked how the ghosts were presented in this story. In most of the books I've read ghosts are presented one of two ways. They're either crazy and malicious or they're living life as normal, except for the dead part. Here we saw the malicious ones and the interactive ones (the library ghost) but we also saw another side of them. So many of the ghosts in this book were stuck in an endless loop. They didn't seem to know they were dead and they just kept endlessly repeating the last hours of their lives. It was sad.

So, if I liked all that why is this graded so low? Well, it wasn't the idea of the story that I had a problem with. It was the execution. This book read in a kind of monotone for me. The characters, even Anya, all seemed flat and bland to me. The events also seemed to unfold in a plodding, uneventful manner. It's hard to describe exactly what I mean. Everything seemed so surface, there was no real depth to anything. It was easy for the events to blur because there were no highs or lows. It just... plodded to the end.

The group DAGR had the potential to be interesting, but we never really got to know any of them. We almost got some depth to Katie, the witch, but her whole role was to be there when Anya needed something. We never got any insight into her actual character. Also, the fact that DAGR couldn't accomplish anything without Anya made them seem bumbling and foolish. It was hard to take them seriously.

Brian, one of Anya's love interests, was also a member of DAGR. Because we were presented with Anya and Brian's non-relationship when it was already established it was hard to see why they were so interested in each other. When Anya longs for Brian but can't risk him getting close it was not interesting to me as a reader. I don't know him further beyond his name and his job. Why would I care?

Anya's other love interest had more depth and was much more interesting, but their attraction made no sense. I thought it was highly unintelligent that she would risk her job for that. The sex scene in the book came out of nowhere too. All of a sudden they were doing it and I felt I missed something. Also, what happened with her job? She got suspended, but then she was back... why? Nothing was resolved in a legal sense. Why was she back at work? That made no sense.

The whole situation with Mimi was rather weak too. Anya felt she couldn't impose on Katie since she cut her ties with DAGR. Why exactly? Weren't you friends? You're an idiot. Your procrastinating made the situation almost impossible to fix. It was only by luck it was fixed at all. Also, what exactly was Mimi's plan? Anya's a gift, I get that, but why? The book was just frustrating to read.