This Week's Debuts - October 13, 2009

Shadowfae by Erica Hayes (website and blog)

Imagine a secret world veiled in fairy glamour and brimming with unearthly delights. A city swarming with half-mad fairies, where thieving spriggans rob you blind, beautiful banshees mesmerize you with their song, and big green trolls bust heads at nightclubs. And once you’re in, there’s no escape…

Enslaved by a demon lord, Jade is forced to spend her nights seducing vampire gangsters and shapeshifting thugs. After two hundred years as a succubus, she burns for freedom and longs to escape her brutal life as a trophy girl for hell’s minions. Then she meets Rajah, an incubus who touches her heart and intoxicates her senses. Rajah shares the same bleak fate as she, and yearns just as desperately for freedom. But the only way for Jade to break her bonds is to betray Rajah—and doom the only man she’s ever loved to a lifetime in hell.

Looks like Jade has herself in quite a pickle. A good premise, but probably too dark and sexy for me. (Just an aside--Rajah (or Raja) is an Indian name. I have also known a woman named Raji and another named Raju. Makes me wonder if this novel absorbs Indian mythology, of which I admittedly know almost nothing.) The author's website has a short story prequel, an excerpt and a book trailer.

Servant of a Dark God by John D. Brown (website, blog and Twitter feed)
Reviewed here. Interview with John Brown here.

Young Talen lives in a world where the days of a person’s life can be harvested, bought, and stolen. Only the great Divines, who rule every land, and the human soul-eaters, dark ones who steal from man and beast and become twisted by their polluted draws, know the secrets of this power. This land’s Divine has gone missing and soul-eaters are found among Talen’s people.

The Clans muster a massive hunt, and Talen finds himself a target. Thinking his struggle is against both soul-eaters and their hunters, Talen actually has far larger problems. A being of awesome power has arisen, one whose diet consists of the days of man. Her Mothers once ranched human subjects like cattle. She has emerged to take back what is rightfully hers. Trapped in a web of lies and ancient secrets, Talen must struggle to identify his true enemy before the Mother finds the one whom she will transform into the lord of the human harvest.

This was a good book. Epic fantasy just as it should be, even if it was light on the romance. John keeps an interesting blog that I've been following for a couple of months now. He's also got a section for writers, teachers, a page on his short stories (with a few links) and "zing".