Black London — (2009-2011) Publisher: Her name is Pete Caldecott. She was just sixteen when she met Jack Winter, a gorgeous, larger-than-life mage who thrilled her with his witchcraft. Then a spirit Jack summoned killed him before Pete’s eyes — or so she thought. Now a detective, Pete is investigating the case of a young girl kidnapped from the streets of London. A tipster’s chilling prediction has led police directly to the child… but when Pete meets the informant, she’s shocked to learn he is none other than Jack. Strung out on heroin, Jack a shadow of his former self. But he’s able to tell Pete exactly where Bridget’s kidnappers are hiding: in the supernatural shadow-world of the fey. Even though she’s spent years disavowing the supernatural, Pete follows Jack into the invisible fey underworld, where she hopes to discover the truth about what happened to Bridget — and what happened to Jack on that dark day so long ago…
    
 Street Magic
Inspector Pete Caldecott is baffled. A rash of child abductions has swept London and all of her leads are turning up bad. The good news is that the lost kids are turning up alive; the bad news is they’re… changed — blinded and usually raving mad by the time the police turn them up.
Pete is almost ready to throw in the towel when a blast from the past suddenly crosses her path. Jack Winter, her sister’s boyfriend from almost a decade ago, shows up and tells her where to find one of her missing children. Even though the child is damaged when she does find her, Jack’s tip turned out to be spot on and Pete wants to know more. Jack however, is not cooperative. Not only does he hold the past history between Pete and himself against her, but he dabbles in black magic, and soon Pete finds herself immersed in evil and a world she didn’t even know existed right in the heart of London.
Street Magic sounded interesting and kind of edgy, so I decided to give it a go. I had kind of an “oh no” thought in my head after the first chapter, but I’m not a quitter and I hate the idea of not finishing something you start. But, there are those rare exceptions and, for me, Street Magic was one of them. I made it all the way to chapter 35 before I finally realized that I had been “working” on this book for almost 2 months and could only bring myself to get through at most 2 chapters in one sitting. I realized I was never going to be able to make myself finish Street Magic.
Street Magic was not a total loss; It has its bright points. I loved Pete — she had a depth that many protagonists lack in this kind of street/dark genre. I wanted to know more about her back-story: Why did she never marry her fiancé? Was she ever in love with Jack? There were many questions I was sincerely hoping to get answers for.
Jack was also an interesting character. He could be described as a kind of Ghost Whisperer, or a medium. The dead would speak to him and he became addicted to heroin to try and quiet their shouts and pleas for help. Once Pete convinced him to kick the habit however, it became known that he was more than just a medium — he was a powerful mage. I wanted to know his back-story, too. What happened in all those years where Pete thought he was dead? Where did he learn all this magic? Was there a specific circumstance that pushed him to drugs? Etc.
I guess my real thorns stuck with the plot. Overall I liked the mystery and wanted to know what was kidnapping the children and why. However, Kittredge never really seemed to get down to the nitty-gritty of the plot. It wandered. There was a lot of the budding (or rebudding, if that’s a word) relationship between Jack and Pete, they randomly get attacked by a banshee, and they happen to come across a couple of mages (who aren't the kidnappers) holding some children hostage in a cemetery. There was too much jumping around and too many random magical incidents.
I just found it hard to pay attention.
—Julie Waineo
(guest)
 Demon Bound
Demon Bound is the second book in Caitlin Kittredge’s Black London series. Kittredge fans will be happy to know that she has once again spun a fascinating yarn that is loaded with creative nuances and twists. Her dark imagination is a breath of dank, moldering, fetid air exhaled by something creeping out of the haunted crypt she calls a brain. She has a knack for unfolding compelling stories without too much backfill (backfill is something I personally find annoying). And I especially love the magic system and the world of London’s “Black.” But as much as I want to give Demon Bound a glowing recommendation, my enjoyment was limited by the fact that I personally found it very hard to sympathize with the male co-protagonist, Jack Winter.
Jack is the co-protagonist and true main character of this novel. (His lover, Pete, a female, was the protagonist of the first). Years ago, Jack bound himself to a demon to save his life because, or so he claims, he was in love with Pete, (though he really just sat on the sidelines and stalked her for nigh on thirteen years, which I’ve never truly forgiven him for). At any rate, while I definitely feel pity that he’s about to die and go to Hell, Jack was just too relentlessly rude and self centered for me to ever work up the kind of empathy I needed to identify with him or his situation. Some of the rudeness was not just gratuitous, it felt stretched and unrealistic, and I was skeptical that even a rude person would be so rude in situations that didn’t seem to call for rudeness. I found myself clawing through Demon Bound in the vain search for the redemption scene where he would show himself worthy of Pete’s love — or, failing that, at least some scene where he said something nice to someone and showed some human decency that I could relate to. And when it became apparent that he was incapable, I began praying that Pete would see the light and dump his sorry butt, though given the story arc, that seems singularly unlikely to happen.
Having said all that, let me say that Caitlin Kittredge is certainly aware that she has made Jack rude and sometimes cruel and hard to get along with. In fact, she has a penchant for writing rude protagonists and has become a best-selling fantasy author despite/because (take your pick) of this. As an urban fantasy junkie, I’ll probably break down and buy the next book in the Black London series (Bone Gods) — but I just want to be clear, I’m doing it for Pete — not Jack. —Stephen Frank
(guest)
 The Curse of Four
The Curse of Four was my first introduction to Caitlin Kittredge’s Black London series. Most of the work in this series is novel-length but the Curse of Four, offered by Subterranean Press, is a novella. Based on this story, I definitely want to read the longer books.
The Curse of Four features a strange and attractive cover. I am a slow study, so I stared at the misty, gray-and-golden images of crows on headstones for a minute before I realized it was a T-shirt design on the torso of a standing man, his face in shadow, his hair Billy-Idol bright. This is Jack Winter, cleaned-up junkie, front man for a legendary punk rock band, psychic, and wizard.
Kittredge employs an interesting point of view in The Curse of Four. Most of it is Jack’s, in very close third-person, but she alternates it with an authorial voice that engages the reader directly. (“There are plenty of ghosts in London, if you know where to look.”) This can be difficult to pull off without looking self-consciously arty, but Kittredge manages it.
Jack shares an apartment and possibly more with a woman detective named Pete Caldecott, but he doesn’t much care for cops, and he is rude when the vacationing Pete’s partner shows up asking for help investigating a murder with supernatural overtones. He agrees, however, and is shocked to discover that the victim is a woman from his past, someone who was involved in dangerous sex magic when he knew her. He finds a fetish in her personal effects, something used to bind a ghost to a magician.
Almost immediately there are more murders. Jack is no longer a consultant but the prime suspect. He has to deal not only with the police and the flesh-and-blood sorcerer who is turning ghosts against their bond, but the ghosts themselves — Aleister Crowley and Rasputin as a start.
Part of the intrigue in urban fantasy is meeting the strange crossroads-dwelling characters each writer invents. Kittredge doesn’t disappoint with Gemma, Jack’s old supplier, who sells mundane street drugs and magical paraphernalia, and the staff of the black magic club Memento.
You had to look past what the eye could discern to see the blot, the stain on the place. It was a halo of filth and pain that hovered like a crown of blowflies over a dead body. It shimmered the air under Jack’s sight, distorted it like heat waves. There was a lot of bad juju in the air of Memento Mori, and Jack intended to go inside and find out who made it that way. Or what.
Jack grew up in council housing and still nurses the wounds of a childhood of hopelessness. This is what drew him, presumably, both to black magic and punk rock. He is still angry, one sentence away from erupting, and the action sequences crackle with intensity. And, sometimes, he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, especially when he trusts a person he told us earlier he would never turn his back on. He also manages to get out of a couple of tight situations with relative ease. Some of these problems seem to have to do with the length of the story. I think the escapes would challenge Jack more in a full-length book.
There is a typo at the beginning of Chapter Eight that mangles the first sentence. It should be “program” not “programmed.” I’m just saying. The last two Subterranean Press books I’ve read have been typo-free, so I think they are making headway on this irritating problem.
One more comment on language. If you are offended by a four-letter word starting with “C” that refers to female genitalia, be aware it shows up on practically every page in this book as a swear word. Fair warning.
The Curse of Four is full of ghosts, those that inhabit London and the ones that fill our awake-at-three-a.m. memories. Jack is a haunted wizard in a haunted city, and I want to see more of them both. —Marion Deeds
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