Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In Deborah Wilde’s Blood & Ash, Vancouver is transformed into a city run by humans with magical powers organized into “House Pacifica,” which has its own rules and laws and quirks that control how the “mundanes” operate. Ashira Cohen, the only female private detective in the city is a mundane whose mother is part of the “Untainted Party,” a political group rivaling the House Pacifica. Ash likes to make her own rules, threading the needle between the two powerful forces calling the shots, and it isn’t easy. And that’s even before an air elemental knocks her on her ass during a surveillance job and Ash discovers she was born with … a little something extra. This is the first in a series of novels, and the world-building and character set up are first rate. There are some genuinely horrifying moments as our heroine crosses paths with otherworldly “smudges” that attack both humans and their magical counterparts. The dark magic these things represent means she needs an ally and she finds one in Levi Montefiore, head of House Pacific and her nemesis since they met in childhood. The magical world of Wilde’s alternate Vancouver is a lot of fun, and she throws in a lot of little details that really “sell” the magic. (My favorite is a scene where cake balls are offered at a party. Called “wish balls,” they will taste like whatever the eater wants them to taste like. Ash is partial to things that are maple syrup and bacon-flavored.) We like Ash a lot. She’s billed as a “snarky” narrator and she is. She reminded me a bit of Anita Blake from Laurell K. Hamilton’s urban fantasy series, complete with the enemies-to-lovers trope. The underlying mythology is Jewish, a nice change from the usual Catholic backdrop, and the reason for how magic escaped into the world is tied into that. (Bonus points for the golem.) There’s a genuine mystery here, and while the book solves it, there is plenty of room to develop the world and larger secrets in the sequels. I look forward to Ash’s new adventures