Debut Graduate Review: Blue Diablo by Ann Aguirre

Blue Diablo (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)
by Ann Aguirre (website, blog)
Publisher: Roc
Paperback: $6.99

Corine Solomon is a handler—when she touches an object she instantly knows its history and its future. Using her ability, she can find the missing—which is why people never stop trying to find her. Like her ex-boyfriend Chance, who needs Corine’s gift to find someone dear to them both. But the search proves dangerous as it leads them into a strange world of demons and sorcerers, ghosts and witchcraft, zombies—and black magic...

When Tia first asked me to read Blue Diablo, I warned her that I'd read Ann Aguirre's debut novel, Grimspace (which Tia reviewed here), and it didn't hook me the way I was hoping it would. So, to be honest, I started Blue Diablo anticipating that I might not like it.

Naturally, I enjoyed it and breezed right through it. Doesn't that always happen?

Blue Diablo is the first in a new series by Ann Aguirre. This series sits squarely in the urban fantasy camp, while Aguirre's previous series, which started with Grimspace, is science fiction.

I have to say my enjoyment of Blue Diablo was based on the characters, not the plot. The plot was serviceable, but I never really cared whether the characters located the missing person they were trying to find. I didn't care about her, and I sometimes felt the characters acted as if they weren't missing her all that much either, although the narration assured me they were.

But the characters themselves were fun. Corine Solomon isn't a snarky heroine (thank God), and she's not kickbutt, either. In fact, she's the least athletic of all the characters in the book. I can relate to that.

For the sake of the plot she has to work with her ex, Chance, and they spend the whole book bickering and learning things about each other that they didn't realize when they were a couple. It was a skillfully drawn relationship. Of course it had weak spots here and there, but overall this relationship was what kept me reading. It was just that much fun. I loved all the history these two people had and how it was reflected in their daily interactions.

The other thing I liked a lot about Blue Diablo was the sense of place. Blue Diablo was full of the little details that bring a setting to life. Aguirre says in the acknowledgments section that she did her best to capture the magic of living as an expatriate in Mexico City, and I thought she did a great job.

I love books where the setting is like another character in the story. You feel like you're there. You get the flavor of it. Too often I don't find this in urban fantasy, where the fantasy elements seem to take over and the setting doesn't get fleshed out. How do the rest of you feel about this? How important is it for you to get a sense of place when you're reading?

Ann Aguirre - Blue Diablo Blog Book Tour

Ann Aguirre is the author of the fabulous Grimspace, plus its sequels Wanderlust and Doubleblind. Now she ventures into Urban Fantasy with Blue Diablo. She is a very amiable author. Her publicist approached me about her Blue Diablo Blog Book Tour way back in January. When I received her post, I very unreasonably asked her to add a paragraph or two to go along with my One Year Later theme. And she very graciously wrote three.

~*~

Last year, I fulfilled the dream of being published in science fiction. This year, I conquer fantasy and romance. (The romance title is coming in December.) But I´m here to talk about the former. The publication of BLUE DIABLO is truly a dream come true for me. Ever since I can remember, I´ve read and admired fantasy authors for their creativity, action-packed plots, worldbuilding and fabulous originality.

Some of my favorite fantasy authors include: Patricia Briggs, Robin McKinley, Sharon Shinn, Patricia McKillip, George RR Martin, Neil Gaiman, CS Friedman, Jeri Smith-Ready, Jim Butcher, Pauline J. Alama, Patricia Wrede, and Terri Windling.

They all share the ability to tell a riveting story, sometimes in astonishingly lyrical language. Now, I can call myself a fantasy author, too. Urban fantasy is often more accessible to non-readers of epic fantasy because it doesn´t offer the same disconnect from our reality. There is generally no need of maps or a special lexicon. Urban fantasy is our world, plus: what the plus entails is up to the author.

In my case, it´s our world, plus magic. Rachel Caine, an author who lives in Texas, called Blue Diablo, “An authentic Southwestern-flavored feast, filled with magic, revenge and romance, spiced with memorable characters and page-turning action. ¡Muy caliente!”

Over the past year, I have had some amazing experiences, some of which still leave me pinching myself. For starters, Grimspace landed on a number of bestseller lists, which surprised the heck out of me. Then, last March, I attended my first SF&F convention, where I signed books next to Sherrilyn Kenyon. That was amazing, and I actually sold out of Grimspace at the con. The booksellers at BAMM were so kind, and they actually told me that Grimspace was the most requested book. By the time I had my official signing, there were only three books left on the shelves.

My next big thrill came in April 2008 when I attended my first RT. Signing at at the big book fair on Saturday was such an amazing experience, and I sold out of Grimspace there as well. I had been worried about the reception I would receive at a romance convention, but it was just lovely.

Spring turned into summer, and then I had a whirlwind of appearances. On my own, I put together a tour that lasted something like three weeks. I had never done anything remotely like that, but I went first to Comic-Con in July, where I sat on a panel with a bunch of SF giants (all men), and then I felt like a rockstar when I had dinner with my two editors and my agent. Talk about a rush. From there, I went on a driving tour up the California coast with the wonderful Chris Marie Green. We signed in Santa Barbara, stayed the night in Solvang, and then went on to RWA in San Francisco. RWA was all-new and wonderful for me too. For the first time, I gave a workshop on writing and selling crossover fiction, along with Robin D. Owens, Catherine Asaro, and Cindy Hwang, my amazing editor. I also had lunch with the executive editor at Penguin, which was utterly exciting. It was overwhelming too, so I was very relieved to get home and get back to business.

At heart, I am much the same as I ever was. I love to write. I love to read. I take my work ethic from Nora Roberts, and I do my best to write the best book each time, regardless of what else is going on. I make my deadlines, and I work hard. But there are diamonds strewn along this path, and I savor every one.

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have about my writing, and I´ll stop by to answer them. It doesn´t have to be related to the Corine series. You can ask about the Jax series or my forthcoming romances as well. I´m also happy to discuss your thoughts on my favorite authors, as I´m all about the books! A random commenter will win a copy of Blue Diablo.

GRIMSPACE by Ann Aguirre - Final Review

Grimspace was a surprise for me in many ways. One, I expected it to be gritty, but pleasantly, it was not. Two, I never expected heroism. Three, after the heroism, I never expected selfishness. The novel certainly took me in places I had no idea I would go.

To recap, Jax is a navigator through grimspace, one of a very few with the elusive "j-gene" that allows one to navigate grimspace. She is an emotional wreck following an accident where she lost her pilot, who was also her lover and her dearest friend. She currently on a space station and is going through dream therapy, which appears to be doing more harm than good. She cannot leave her room without an escort.

When March appears in her room, offering a way out, she takes it. They escape from the station and go to an off-the-beaten-path planet, where Jax learns that March hopes to help establish an independent school for grimspace navigators--one unafilliated with the sinister and powerful Corp. Their plan involves something that I thought was unethical. Jax had her doubts as well, but she knows that the Corp is doing other things that are just as unethical if not more so, so she goes along.

Then the plot started taking turns that I never expected. In the interests of not giving too much away, I'll just throw up some highlights. We have an alien baby, a pirate space station, ghastly human experimentation, an all too easy escape, and an alien bounty hunter with a . . . but no, that would give too much away.

The plot tends to be episodic, jumping from objective to objective. It reads something like The Adventures of Jax. In some places you will love Jax, and in other places you might be thinking, "Why the HECK is she doing that?" Sometimes I thought the plot was a bit convienient for storytelling purposes. Their first escape was way too easy, and it would have been better if it had been a bit more desperate. The author seemed to think the escape was too easy as well, because she threw in a line about lax guards. Other plot turns seemed convenient as well, but I won't belabor the point. Jax and her friends faced plenty of challenges to make up for it.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. It had characters with consciences, emotional consequences for jumping in bed too early, heroism, both sung and unsung, betrayals, clever deceptions, people willing to die for their cause and the formation of unlikely friendships. I loved it that the ship doctor was the strong guy, and that the ship's mechanic was a woman with a past you would NEVER expect. I also didn't expect there to be an alien on the ship, nor did I suspect the alien's eventual relationship with Jax. I did like the way she resolved it, however. And I liked the way the novel ended. It resolved much more than I expected--the novel could stand alone except for a tiny teaser that is probably explored in future books.

I just looked at the blurb from Wanderlust, the next book in the series. I wondered where the author could possibly take the series from here, but it looks just as good as Grimspace.

Fans of science fiction romance, this is one you need to read.

Links!

GRIMSPACE (Amazon US, UK, Canada)
Ann Aguirre (website, blog)
Ace Books
Mass Market Paperback
Excerpt

Loving Grimspace!

I'm enjoying Grimspace so much that I'm going to spend another evening reading it. I'm a little over halfway through and it has taken some very unexpected turns. Let's just say that you would never expect some of the things to happen. I certainly didn't see them coming.

It was suffering from a lack of a villain until about halfway through. The villain was the amorphous "Corp," a bureaucracy that Jax worked for, navigating through Grimspace. Now, there's another one, but he's the best kind of villain--the kind you actually like.

There's lots of unexpected humor in the story when an alien baby appears on the scene.

Belatedly I notice his eyes aren't on mine, and I glance down. Shit, I'm standing around bare-breasted, nursing like some class-P village woman, my scars shiny with slime. Rest of me is covered in dried mud, and my hair looks like it belongs to a New Terran dirt-dauber priestess, so yeah, I've never looked better. But frag him, what do I care? I'm doing a good thing here.

Yes, this book has soul. It has bona-fide heroism packaged in a scarred-up gruff exterior (kind of like the way I enjoyed The Sword-Edged Blonde, only with a female main character), and I'm eating it up. So if you don't mind, I'll go read some more.

Grimspace - Opening Chapters

I've read eleven chapters of Grimspace by Ann Aguirre so far, and it looks like it will be a quick read. It didn't engage me at first, but with each chapter I got more and more into it until at this point, I'm committed.

Sirantha Jax is in trouble. She's wrecked her last spaceship and her pilot-partner is dead. She is deeply affected by his death, and the psychological counseling she is undergoing just seems to be making things worse. She is held in gentle imprisonment until it can be determined if she was at fault.

Or at least, she thinks it's gentle. When March breaks into her cell and gives her the choice to go with him or stay, he tells her that the counseling was intended to drive her insane, not help her. It makes sense to her, so off with him she goes. They bust out of the space station, encountering perhaps just a few plot stretches to make their escape easier.

Sometimes the problem with starting a book off with a bank and plunging right into the action is you don't have much of a reason to care for the character at first. You're just scrambling to catch up. For that reason, I didn't get to a point where I didn't want to put the book down until about fifty pages into it. Not that it was difficult to get into--not at all--but I also found it rather easy to set aside until this point. I also encountered a death that was rather convenient for Jax, but I won't go into detail for fear of spoilage.

However, things improve when Jax takes action to save a life that no one else seems inclined to save. Heroism will always work for me. So I'll keep reading.

Here is my original showcase on Grimspace, with all the usual links.