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LiliaFord

LiliaFord

Mostly Cross Posts from my blog, Readings From the Dark Side

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Iron & Velvet

Iron & Velvet - Alexis Hall The paranormal PI is its own little mini-genre, and the plot and world-building here followed the main patterns of the other examples I've read, especially the heavyweight of the genre, [a:Jim Butcher|10746|Jim Butcher|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1400640324p2/10746.jpg]'s Harry Dresden series. Hall's main innovation then was making Kate a lesbian, and what an innovation! Kate's a terrific character, a really fresh take on the familiar hard-boiled, hard-drinking PI type. Also, since I think of that character as quintessentially American, the "Englishness" of the narration added a lot for me. Like with [b:Glitterland|17727137|Glitterland (Glitterland #1)|Alexis Hall|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364942814s/17727137.jpg|24797122], Hall's writing is superb--absolutely riddled with witty, memorable, quotable phrases. A few examples:

"I couldn't be arsed to shower, so I threw on what had been yesterday's clothes yesterday, and made myself a breakfast of reheated coffee and ibuprofen."

"If it wasn't for werewolf cousins, there'd be far fewer fashion interns, It boys, graphic novelists, bespoke shoe boutiques, and sushi-haggis fusion restaurants in the world."

"What can I say? I went through a biker chick phase, and by biker chick phase, I mean I slept with a lot of biker chicks."

The strong, clever voice kept me reading despite the plot being nothing new. Sadly for myself, I wasn't able to get too riled up by the sex scenes--I thought they were very well written but admiration is not exactly the emotion I'm after for those babies. The great dialogue and characters more than made up for it, however.

Bottom Line: This book officially put Alexis Hall on my auto-buy list.