Night Child by Jes Battis

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first. All of these paranormal investigator potboilers coming down the pike are more or less the same. It’s all a question of how well each one rearranges the furniture… Night Child for the most part races along indifferent to its unoriginality and determined simply to entertain you on a dark and stormy night. It’s pleasantly surprising how well Battis pulls it off — most of the way… despite their hackneyed qualities, Tess and the other characters do emerge from the page as convincing people. Sometimes, we like stock characters in our genre fiction because they’re relatable in certain ways… if any latter-day PI story deserves to avoid dismissal as a shallow cash-in, Night Child would be it. But for all that he has his heart in his world here, Battis the storyteller hasn’t yet gotten beyond Formula One. The plot could be that of any CSI episode, provided you slipped a few mages and demons into it. A little more thinking outside the proverbial box next time, and this series could have some real bite. Read the rest.