Thursday, June 27, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bloodbath by Stephanie Ahn




Bloodbath is the second in Stephanie Ahn's "Harrietta Lee" urban fantasy series, following last year's novella "Deadline" (Review Here).  I've come to be a pretty big fan of the urban fantasy genre, and Deadline's angst-ridden lesbian blood witch protagonist was instantly a hit for me.  Now the first novella was a bit more explicit than most urban fantasy books I've read (though it didn't include sex, there's a full on consensual BDSM scene), but it all worked together to form an excellent start to what seemed like a new series.

Bloodbath is about 70 pages longer than its predecessor, making it more clearly a short novel rather than a novella and it makes good use of those extra pages.  Protagonist Harry Lee remains excellent, the expanded world remains interesting - we get to see some of the reference magical authorities this time - and the plot has a number of solid twists and turns.  The magic displayed here is maybe a little less interesting than in the first novella, but it's still generally original and the result is a very solid story I'd recommend.  Oh and yes, it's still just as explicit as its predecessor, with the BDSM replaced with full on sex this time, so fair warning.

More after the jump:

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Harrietta "Harry" Lee's life has seemingly gotten back to stability - well as stable as one can get for an excommunicated blood witch, whose magic was corrupted by demon blood, and whose body is now marked with a demon sigil.  A demon sigil belonging to a hot female demon who Harry can't seem to ward away.....and who Harry might not even want to ward away.  But still....she's not having self-destructive impulses every day of the week anymore, so that's something.

But when Harry takes a job to search for a teenager who's gone missing, she finds more than she's bargained for: a series of disappearances around the city, including a few of people with latent magical talent.  And then one of those disappearances turns out to be Harry's close friend Joy, another witch on the outs from the magical community, and one with a talent for seeing the future.

Desperate to find Joy and the others, Harry will be forced to collect a smattering of uncertain and only semi-capable allies, but this time around, her enemies will not be underestimating her.....and her limited, corrupted magic may not be enough to prevent her from getting killed.
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Bloodbath follows up fairly quickly after the end of "Deadline," continuing the story of Harry Lee, disgraced blood witch, but expanding the world quite a bit.  That book, essentially a novella, introduced Harry, her sister, and part of the magical world, but mostly alluded to other major elements: the council who governs the community and excommunicated Harry, for example, in addition to other magically gifted humans and non-humans.   By contrast, Bloodbath is all-in on introducing all of these elements, so (minor spoiler) we actually get to meet the Council as well as other mages and magical creatures and demons who are around in Harry's version of New York.

Of course, none of this would work out if Harry still wasn't such an effective protagonist, which well she most definitely is.  A wisecracking often-bitter and a little angsty (although not as much as in book 1 for obvious reasons) rogue mage who often has to deal with the limitations of her own (lack of) power, she's a hell of a character who is easy to follow.  And her impulsive and often self destructive nature makes her hard to predict and yet even at her most crazy she feels very real and true, if that makes sense.

The rest of the book's cast is clearly secondary to Harry in terms of character development, but they're all interesting - from handicapped DJ and tech expert Izzy who may also have a latent talent with music magic to Nikki, a young woman who was also a friend of Joy and may have her own connection to the magical world, to the individual members of the council, and of course Harry's sister Luce.  Most prominently though is the demon Lilith, who has kind of a cat and mouse game with Harry around the plot....a very, sexy cat and mouse game - yes, there's two explicit sex scenes between Harry and Lilith to go along with the other interactions between them.  Lilith is clearly a puzzle that is meant to be a long term aspect of this series (though there's an obvious answer to part of this mystery that this book doesn't explore yet) and she works rather well in that regard, with her being a far more integrated part of this book than in the prior novella.

Again, this is a longer book than the prior work in the series, by nearly a 100 pages, and it shows.  If there's any complaint I have, it's that the book pulls a late game plot twist that I'm not really sure lands, since it involves a character who isn't revealed for most of the book.  Taking the plot twist as given though, the story still works pretty well and is satisfying, with Harry, Lilith, and Harry's friends in new and interesting places at the end of everything.  Hopefully we'll see those friends again in future books (the next book is listed as "coming 2020-2021" so probably not for a while alas), as we didn't get to see the other friend character of Harry from the first book in this novel, which is also kind of weird, and I'd like to see them all become more permanent members of the cast. 

Regardless, for those who want an urban fantasy with a touch of noir, with a angsty wisecracking lesbian witch as its heroine, and some explicit scenes in the middle, well, this is pretty damn good at all of that.
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