Lilith Saintcrow

Watcher — (2004- ) More books are planned. Publisher: The Lightbringer: Theodora Morgan knows she's a little strange. Her talent for healing has set her apart, marked her as different all her life — a life spent moving from town to town when too much notice is taken of her abilities. Unfortunately, her talent for healing has brought her to the attention of the Crusade — and the Dark. The Crusade wants her dead because she's psychic, the Dark wants to feed on her talent — and then there's Dante. Tall and grim and armed with black-bladed knives, guns and a sword, he says he's here to protect her. But what if Theo needs protection from him? The Watcher: Dante is a Watcher, sworn by Circle Lightfall to protect the Lightbringers. His next assignment? Watch over Theo. She doesn't know she's a Lightbringer, she doesn't know she's surrounded by enemies — and she doesn't know she's been marked for death by a bunch of fanatics. Perfect. He can't protect her if she doesn't trust him, but how can she possibly trust a man scarred by murder and warfare — a man who smells like the same Darkness Theo has been running from all her life?

Society — (2005- ) There are two more Society books planned. Publisher: The black-ops government agency called Sigma broke Justin Delgado, trained his psionic talent, and turned him into a killer named Agent Breaker. Then he escaped, joining an underground resistance movement of psions determined to use their talents to bring Sigma down. Competent, cold, and cruelly efficient, he's the best operative the Society has, a legend among the psions who fight a shadow war against an enemy that owns the courts, the press, and the police. Feared even by his own teammates, hunted by the government, and too damaged to feel anything but clinical rage, he is utterly alone — until he meets Rowan. When Rowan Price stumbles across his team in an abandoned house, Delgado is assigned to make contact, bring her in, and keep her alive — because Rowan is one of the most powerful psychics the resistance has ever encountered, possessed of a talent that can heal shattered minds and broken bodies, or incite riots and revolution. If the government gets its hands on her, she could very well mean the downfall of the resistance itself. Because nobody, not even Rowan, is quite sure how far her talents extend, or powerful she could eventually become… and twenty-four hours after she meets Delgado, her life is shattered and she's on the run. If Sigma can't take her freedom, they'll settle for her life. She is simply too powerful to be left alone. The Society will welcome her, if she can stay alive long enough to join them. Unfortunately, there's a traitor buried in the ranks of the resistance, ready to betray everything the Society has worked so hard to achieve. If the Society goes down, Rowan is at risk. And God alone knows what Delgado will do to keep her safe, because Rowan is fast becoming the only thing in the world he cares about.

The Steelflower Chronicles — (2008) Publisher: Picking the wrong pocket can get a girl in trouble. Thief, assassin, sellsword Kaia Steelflower is famous. Well, mostly famous, and mostly for the wrong reasons. She's made a good life for herself, despite being kicked out of her homeland for having no magic. She's saving up for her retirement, when she can settle down, run an inn, and leave the excitement for others. Then she picks the wrong pocket, wakes up with a hangover, and gets far more than she bargained for. Now she has a huge, furry barbarian to look after, a princeling from her homeland to fend off, and an old debt to fulfill. And for some reason, the God-Emperor's assassins want to kill her. Its never easy being an elvish sellsword, and this time it just might be fatal.

Steelflower

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened Steelflower. The cover art looked like your standard urban fantasy cover: a feisty female with an exotic looking sword, shot from the back. The plot description on the back cover sounded like someone’s novelization of a roleplaying game — elvish sellsword meets crude barbarian and they join up to defeat the evil badguy — but what I found inside was a fun sword and sorcery style romp with interesting main characters and non-stop action.

The thief and assassin known as Steelflower is actually Kaia, a G’mai (elf) who leaves her home country after being shunned by her people for ten years because she lacks Power. The G’mai are bred to possess power, and can only operate it in twinned pairs, a female adai and a male starei. The female works magic, and the starei protects her, both from herself as well as others. The G’mai are paired off fairly young in their lives, and these pairings are permanent, and function as marriages as the children age. If they are separated from each other, either because of distance or death of one of the pairing, they sicken and die. Kaia is orphaned as a five year old when her mother dies of an illness, and her father dies shortly thereafter from the loss. Because Kaia doesn’t have Power, she doesn’t have a function in G’mai society, and ends up leaving to find her fortune in other lands. But when a G’mai male appears in her life, insisting that she is his adai, it changes her entire life.

The plot of Steelflower isn’t particularly original or innovative, though I do particularly like the paired magic system of the G’mai, but where Steelflower shines is in the relationship between Kaia and her would-be starei Darik. Kaia has been away from her people for years, and when this handsome G’mai shows up to tell her new and interesting details about her past, she doesn’t automatically accept him and his story. Steelflower manages to have a lot of action while most of the conflict is actually character driven, as Kaia struggles to decide what to do with Darik and his claims about her relationship with him. The ongoing internal conflict provides most of the tension in the book. For all the action, there really isn’t a villain until almost the last 50 pages of the book.

Steelflower does have some weaknesses. Outside of the two main characters, the supporting cast is really underdeveloped. I kept getting characters confused as more people were added to the story. The prose at times was awkward and poorly edited, and there were times I had to stop and read the same sentence multiple times to figure out what was being said. The most egregious flaw, however, was the abysmal artwork in the book. These drawings look like something Napoleon Dynamite did with a number two pencil in math class. They actually threw me out of the narrative flow of the story as I would try to reconcile what was in the drawing with the mental picture in my head. This book is the start of a series, and I am begging the powers that be to not include artwork in the future.

Steelflower is not great fiction, but it’s a fun light read with interesting main characters. I’m interested in seeing where the story will go from here, since it was left with many possible courses of action for the protagonist to follow. Steelflower is a great choice for reading with a cold drink at the beach or by the pool this summer. —Ruth   Comments