Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna #1)
By Kendare Blake
****
“Move, hunt, kill. Like lather, rinse, and repeat.”
― Kendare Blake, Anna Dressed in Blood
From Goodreads:
Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
Yet she spares Cas's life.
From Me:
I read this book for this month's FYA Book Club selection. It was described to me as a cross between Supernatural and Scooby Doo, which I can totally see. Cas (come on, Cas?!) is very Dean-like, if Dean's mom lived instead of his dad, and he had no Sammy to hunt with him. Cas is cool. I like Cas. Anna's pretty cool, too, for a BAMF dead girl from the fifties. I love how she changed from ghost-girl to ghost-hulk depending on the situation - it made her a really fascinating character.
Blake pulls no punches when it comes to violence, like for reals. If you have a weak stomach and are easily squicked out, you may want to skim some of these sections. Things get pretty darn gruesome from time to time, and they're hard to stomach. But, as always with me, it's the horrible things that people do that cause me more trouble than the things the monsters do.
Great Halloween option for weenies like me who don't like straight-up horror. Spooky, creepy, eerie: yes; gross, violent: sometimes; scare me into putting the book in the freezer: no.
Jackaby (Jackaby #1)
By William Ritter
****
“Hell of a sight. She let out a scream and just fell to pieces. Can't say I blame her. Like I said, this sort of thing is not for the female temperament." He directed that last sentiment at me, making eye contact for the first time.
"I dare say you're right, sir," I conceded, meeting his gaze. "Out of curiosity, though, is there someone whose temperament you do find suited to this sort of thing? I think I would be most unnerved to meet a man who found it pleasant.”
― William Ritter, Jackaby
Jackaby is a detective mystery set in the 1890s in the New England area. Jackaby is a detective with some very Sherlockian attributes: he's more focused on *what* he's seeing than *who* he's seeing; he has no real idea of the correct way to interact with others, which often makes him come across as rude; and he wears a funny hat. Ways in which Jackaby is different from Sherlock? Well first off, he doesn't see all the minute details of a situation - the ordinary things others would overlook despite their significance - and leaves that to our narrator, Abigail Rook. Also, he's a seer. He sees the impossible like kobolds and banshees and the like, which the people of Ritter's world do not know about nor believe in.
Abigail Rook is like Sherlock's Watson; she acts as our narrator and she assists Jackaby in his investigation. She finds a job with Jackaby after newly arriving in the States. She's originally from England, the daughter of a scholar and archaeologist, who wanted nothing more than to join her father in his adventures, but was told that wasn't a place for women. She ran away from school to join a dig for dinosaurs, but the experience wasn't what she was hoping for. Rather than giving up on her own adventures, though, she stuck out her time on the dig, then got on a boat to America.
The action of the story only takes place over the course of a couple days. There's a murder, one that Jackaby concludes was committed by a supernatural villain. Jackaby and Abigail follow the clues to the big reveal at the end. And I must admit, I actually guessed the culprit pretty early, but since that never happens to me, I assumed I was wrong. Does it count if I figure out the whodunit if I don't believe I figured it out?
Jackaby was a fun story, and lighter than the gorgeous yet dark cover art would lead you to believe. It had it's dark moments, of course; it is a murder investigation after all, but overall the tone was light and often humorous. There were multiple interesting supporting characters, with a decent mix of males and females. All in all, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more stories in this world.
Recommended.
**I received Jackaby as an Advanced eGalley from Net Galley**
