Spellcrackers
Spellcrackers — (2008-2014) Publisher: ‘My name is Genny Taylor. I work for Spellcrackers.com. It’s a great job, pays the rent, lets me do the thing I’m good at — finding magic and cracking it — and the bonus is it’s run by witches, which stops the vamps from taking a bite out of me. Not that vampires are the big bad any more, not since they launched a slick PR campaign — oh, and they brought the goblins on board. Now the vamps are sought-after celebrities, and Getting Fanged and taking the Gift are the new height of all things cool. But only if you’re human. And I’m not. I’m Sidhe fae. And I know firsthand just how deadly a vampire can be.’ When Mr October, a sexy calendar pin-up vamp, is accused of murdering his girlfriend, an old debt is called in and Genny is forced to help prove his innocence, risking her job and the protection it offers — and threatening to expose her own dark secrets. Searching for the killer plunges Genny deep into the hidden heart of vampire society. It’s not long before she realises that she and Mr October are both unwitting pawns in a centuries-old power struggle between London’s non-human communities… and it’s not just her own neck that’s at stake, but the lives of all London’s supernaturals.
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The Sweet Scent of Blood by Suzanne McLeod
Genevieve is the only sidhe fae in London and has a traumatic past involving vampires, which we readers learn about in flashbacks throughout the story. She works as a spellcracker, removing hexes from objects. There are two ways she can remove a spell. She can “crack” the spell, thereby destroying both the spell and the object, or she can absorb it into herself, which carries its own problems. As the story begins, a celebrity vampire stands accused of murdering his girlfriend, Melissa. The vampire’s father hires Genny to examine Melissa’s body for evidence of magic. His theory is that someone killed Melissa with a spell and then made it look like a vampire attack.
Or at least that’s the ostensible plot. As it happens, Genny never does examine Melissa’s body, instead becoming embroiled in a tangled power struggle among several powerfu... Read More
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The Cold Kiss of Death by Suzanne McLeod
Sidhe fae Genevieve Taylor is in trouble again. Hannah Ashby, whom Genny met in the last book, has shown up again — this time wielding powerful magic and demanding the priceless Fabergé egg Genny received from the Earl. Genny’s also being haunted by the ghost of a young girl. Worst of all, she finds a friend murdered and is framed for the crime. Now she needs the help of the manipulative vampire Malik al-Khan, which never comes for free.
Much like the first Spellcrackers book, The Sweet Scent of Blood, the plot of The Cold Kiss of Death is intensely convoluted. Plot points that seem at first to be central turn out to be peripheral and vice versa, as Genny discovers a complex web of schemes underlying what she thought w... Read More
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The Bitter Seed of Magic by Suzanne McLeod
Up until this point, reading Suzanne McLeod’s SPELLCRACKERS series has often been an exercise in frustration. The novels were often confusing, but were well-written enough that I couldn’t dismiss them and always felt there was huge potential for the series. With book three, The Bitter Seed of Magic, McLeod finally strikes the right balance between clarity and obfuscation.
The Bitter Seed of Magic focuses on the curse laid on the lesser fae of London by the sidhe queen Cliona. The curse is introduced earlier in the series, but McLeod recaps it in the prologue, a refresher for which I was grateful. Among other things, it has blighted the lesser fae’s fertility, which causes problems for Genny Taylor as the various fae races see her — specifically, impregn... Read More
Suzanne McLeod has been a cocktail waitress, dance group promoter and barmaid at Coventry City Football Club. After years in retail management, she started writing. She lives with her husband and rescue dogs in Bournemouth. Visit Suzanne McLeod‘s 
