Ben and Rose have just gotten married when they receive a letter from Hannibal saying that he's being held prisoner in a Gothic mansion in Mexico where he's forced to play the violin for the delusional owner of the mansion who has regular hallucinatory conversations with Aztec Gods; he can't flee because, among other obstacles, the police want to hang him as the believe he poisoned the owner's son. Ben and Rose to the rescue!

This had a lot of very thought-provoking and sensitive stuff on the historical treatment of mental illness, legal slavery vs slavery in all but name, religion, and Ben's dilemma of never having a place where he can both feel at home and not have to deal with racism. This was all neatly married to a solid murder mystery, a family drama, and tons of adventure and bonding. Hambly is really good at writing established couples who are still madly in love, and I really enjoyed all the Ben/Rose moments as well as the Ben/Rose & Hannibal. The supporting characters were vivid and interesting, as was the new setting.

The climax didn't rise to quite the batshit heights of the last one, but not for want of trying.

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Grimness quotient: Low, all things considered. There's a visit to an asylum which is awful and tragic, but the man running it is compassionate; it's mostly about how people just had no idea what to do about mental illness then. Some people stuck in miserable nunneries. Poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, but also lots of people just living their lives and managing to make pretty good ones despite it all.

Days of the Dead (Benjamin January, Book 7)

I report with sorrow that I have now finished all of Liu's Dirk & Steel series, and can't read any more till her new one coms out. Apparently that one's about a dragon prince! Too bad, I was hoping for one about Eddie, that little angst-muffin.

These two books, the first a stand-alone and the second a novella in the book Dark Dreamers edited by Christine Feehan, make an unintentionally good paired reading set. Both are about a non- or part-human man enchanted and enslaved by a witch, and rescued by a bi- or multi-racial human woman.

I loved "A Dream of Stone and Shadow." It might be my favorite Dirk & Steel yet. The short length kept the focus clean. D&S agent Aggie is a bad-ass pre-cog who rescues children from sexual abuse. She is contacted by a gargoyle who is imprisoned by a witch, along with his three brothers who have been turned to stone, and can only escape into the astral plane when the witch cuts out his heart and eats it with a nice Chianti. He and Aggie bond, rescue a little girl, and have psychic orgasms. Amiri guest-stars. And it's even more awesome than it sounds!

Dark and gruesome as a fairy tale, it's also full of black humor and action. Aggie is excellently tough and sweet, the gargoyle is charming, and while the finale was a borderline nonsensical deus ex machina, I didn't even care.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: Dark Dreamers

I knew Soul Song was "the one with the merman" but for some reason I thought that meant the hero was amphibious and/or could turn into a dolphin. No, he's a merman with the traditional fish tail! He's the abused slave of a witch who forces him to work as a prostitute and assassin, and who is ordered to kill Kit Bell, a biracial violinist who can see when people are about to die. There are bad cops, a vampire, a society of merpeople whose bones are too soft for them to live on land, and cameos by assorted D&S agents.

I liked Kit a lot. Alas, M'Cal, the merman, has lots of angst but little personality. There's a lot of running around and a storm at sea, but to little purpose. Enjoyable but not one of Liu's better works. Though it did have one truly excellent moment...

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