Unclean Spirits: Book One of the Black Sun's Daughter
M.L.N. Hanover
Pocket Books, 2009
U.S. mass market paperback, reprint
ISBN 978-1-4391-4305-6
400 pages; $7.99

Darker Angels: Book Two of The Black Sun's Daughter
M.L.N. Hanover
Pocket Books, 2009
U.S. mass market paperback, first edition
ISBN 978-1-4165-7677-8
368 pages; $7.99

I don’t read urban fantasy – or so I thought. I tried a novel or two when the bookshelves started to fill up with covers depicting women scantily clad in black leather, all with tattoos on their lower backs and weapons of one sort or another in their hands, but they seemed rather generic and – at least the ones I read – not all that well-written.

Then I heard about that M.L.N. Hanover was actually Daniel Abraham, the author of the Long Price Quartet. So far I’ve only read the first in that series, A Shadow in Summer, but I admired it greatly, and am looking forward to reading the next three straight in a row when time allows. So much did I like Abraham’s work that I was willing to take another chance on urban fantasy and try out the two novels in the series titled The Black Sun’s Daughter, written by Abraham’s alter ego.

I’m glad I did. The two novels published in the series to date, Unclean Spirits and Darker Angels, are a kick to read, just pure adrenaline-fueled fun. I haven’t had this much pure entertainment since I rode the Screaming Eagle at Six Flags in Gurney, Illinois a million years ago. I wish there were more books in this series available right now, because I’d swallow them whole right this minute.

Unclean Spirits starts when Eric Heller dies and leaves his entire estate to his niece, Jayné Heller (her first name is pronounced zha-nay, but it’s frequently mispronounced as plain old Jane). Jayné is just a few days shy of her twenty-third birthday when she learns that she has suddenly become wealthy – the kind of wealthy that not only doesn’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from, but doesn’t even have to worry about keeping a roof over her head, because she can always pay cash for a house if she needs one. She meets her uncle’s lawyers and his assistant, Aubrey, all of whom seem normal. Although she’s pretty dazed at her sudden good fortune – especially given that she’s just dropped out of college, has been disowned by her immediate family, and hadn’t figured out what to do with herself when this news came out of the blue – everything seems as normal as it can seem when you’ve essentially won the lottery but lost the only relative you cared about.

That is, it seems normal until Jayné goes to her uncle’s apartment in Denver and finds a corpse in the bedroom. Things quickly get worse when the corpse opens its eyes and speaks to her. But everything’s okay; Midian is simply very, very old. In fact, he was born the year they stormed the Bastille, he explains. And oh, by the way, it was a bunch of evil wizards who killed her uncle. Jayné is dubious until four figures break into the apartment and try to kill her, and she is able to fight with a great deal more ability than she ever imagined. Between the two of them, Midian and Jayné kill the four strangers – and Jayné is now deeply into something about which she knows nothing.

Unclean Spirits tells the tale of how Jayné begins to learn who her uncle was and what magic is, and a very little bit about who she is herself. She does this while attempting to destroy the magician who killed her uncle, working with his allies. There are a number of disasters along the way, including the near death of a young man Jayné finds herself beginning to love. Relationships with others begin for the sake of convenience and turn into strong bonds of friendship and sometimes enmity. As the book ends, Jayné is still alive and has accomplished what she set out to do, but she is still almost completely ignorant about her inheritance – both in terms of what material things are out there, and in terms of what she has gained by learning of the magical world she lives in. Jayné is strong, sexy and smart, but she isn’t too much of any of these; she is far more real and vulnerable than your average heroine.

Darker Angels opens six months later. During the interim, Jayné has had her staff – her uncle’s former assistant and two men who had helped him out from time to time, one an ex-priest known as Ex and one who is – well, Chogyi Jake is hard to describe, but the feeling emanating from the character is peace, even in the context of incredible violence. The group is in Athens, Greece, performing an inventory of Jayné Uncle Eric’s possessions in his house – now Jayné’s house – magical and otherwise. They’ve been skipping from city to city around the world doing the same thing, and they’re all exhausted.

Which means they’re not really in good shape to take on a new case. But when a call comes in to Eric’s cellphone (still programmed to say “Hey, you’ve got a call” in Eric’s voice, freaking out everyone who hears it) from a former client, asking for help in New Orleans, Jayné jumps at the chance to get more information about her uncle. If it means dealing with a supernatural beastie attempting to take over a teenager’s body, well, why not perform a good deed in the meantime?

But Jayné and her group are getting involved with New Orleans voodoo, and they don’t know the territory. Legba gives Jayné a good, strong warning early on that she barely survives; but Jayné is stubborn. The group fractures under the pressure, but still the notion of helping that teenager is so compelling that Jayné can’t help but soldier on.

In this second book, each of the characters becomes more clearly defined. Ex is no longer merely the one who performs exorcisms; he is a whole person, with his own loves and past and issues. Chogyi Jake becomes something more of a mascot to the group, with the way he exudes calm, though he is still more of a cipher than the others. Aubrey and Jayné both develop and retard their relationship, much like relationships usually work.

In the meantime, the reader gets a good look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And the reader gets a lesson in voodoo and the power it gives its practitioners in this alternate universe, especially to women. And it’s all written with such tension that the book nearly vibrates in your hand. I read it in less than 24 hours, barely pausing to work, eat or sleep.

So I guess I read urban fantasy after all. At least, I read it when it’s written by M.L.N. Hanover. This is great stuff, and at mass market paperback prices, you can’t afford to pass it up.