"Quirky, fast-paced fantasy with entertaining characters and storyline."
Reviewed by Sue Burke
Posted November 8, 2010
Fantasy Urban
Living in an alternate reality Chicago, Madeline (Maddy)
Black tries her best to keep some kind of balance between
her professional life and her personal life. Except,
Maddy's profession is "Agent of Death" and her personal
life...well, to be kind, is almost non-existent. You'd think with a cool job title, limited magical ability
and wings that Maddy had the perfect job. Not so much; her
boss is a jerk her coworkers kiss up to, the bureaucracy
involved in being a supernatural civil servant is enough to
drive her insane and the pay is not all that great. To help meet the bills, Maddy rents out an apartment in her
building. Her real troubles start when she rents to a tall,
dark and handsome stranger named Gabriel Angeloscuro. Now,
as a reader, I thought the name should have given her a
hint that maybe there was a little something extra to
Gabriel, but the piano-on-the-head moniker didn't even
register with her. Nor did the soul-sucking demon that went
after her as soon as Gabriel came into her life. Or...the
cold-water-in-the-face remarks her sidekick gargoyle
companion, Beezle, interjected from the second he met
Gabriel. Nope, Maddy stumbles along blindly escorting souls
to the gate, doing research on the soul eater and falling
in love with what could turn out to be the quintessentially
wrong man. It's a good thing our heroine is made of strong stuff as
she soon has to face more than pesky clients or a boss she
can't stand or even falling in love. Maddy's big battle
will be facing her murky heritage; the past she never knew
but is intimately connected with; the past that places her
directly between the light and the dark. A fast-paced first novel by Christina Henry, BLACK
WINGS is a lot of fun, albeit a little predictable at
times. The characters are fleshed out and believable.
Learning about Maddy's heritage throughout the book fully
invests the reader in her story. Beezle, her gargoyle
companion, is sure to be a fan favorite; he's her funny and
caring best friend who always has her back. I will have no
problem talking this book up to customers and friends.
SUMMARY
Excorting souls into the afterlife leaves Maddy little
time for socializing-until devilishly handsome Gabriel
Angeloscurro agrees to rent the empty apartment in her
building. But when demons start appearing on Maddy's front
lawn, she realizes there's more to her new tenant than
meets the eye.
ExcerptI hate it when a soul goes all stubborn on me. It doesn’t
happen as often as you’d think. Most people understand that
they’re dead and want to move on. Maybe it’s because they
think heaven is waiting for them. Maybe it’s because they
believe they’ll be reincarnated as the Princess of Monaco -
does anybody want to be reincarnated as the Princess of
Monaco anymore? Maybe it’s because they’re just tired of
this world. When I show up to escort them to the Door, they
know why I’m there and they’re ready to go. But sometimes,
like today, a soul doesn’t want to leave its earthly body.Mrs. Luccardi didn’t want to leave her cats – all 15 of
them. People get very attached to their pets. In fact, I’ve
seen a fair number of people more attached to their pets
than to their children. I understand that they feel like
their little four-legged buddy is part of the family. What
I have to make them understand is that they are dead, and
can no longer feed, groom or cuddle little Muffy, Flopsy,
or Fido. It can be a delicate job, convincing the recently
deceased of their new status. "Mrs. Luccardi, you’re dead," I said. "You can’t take care
of your cats anymore. Someone else will have to do that
now." I fought the urge to cover my nose as I said this. Mrs.
Luccardi was recently deceased and therefore immune to the
reek of cat piss that permeated her doily-covered living
room, but I was very much alive and getting tired of
breathing through my mouth. Aside from my burning need to breathe air unscented by eau
de cat urine, I had two other pressing reasons for getting
Mrs. Luccardi out of there. First, I had a potential tenant
coming to look at the empty apartment in my building in
twenty minutes, and I didn’t want to piss off a possible
source of income by showing up late. Second, some of Mrs.
Luccardi’s precious darlings were contemplating her cooling
body with "buffet" in their eyes. I did not want Mrs.
Luccardi to see her babies gnawing through her flowered
housedress to flesh and bone. That kind of thing tends to
traumatize the newly dead and prevents an Agent from an
efficient escort to the Door. If the soul doesn’t enter the Door, than they become
ghosts. Agents don’t like ghosts. They’re untidy. The
presence of a ghost means you couldn’t close your list, and
if you can’t close your list you have to file extra
paperwork to explain why you couldn’t and I absolutely hate
doing any paperwork at all, period. So I really wanted Mrs.
Luccardi to leave her carnivorous little fuzzballs and come
with me, pronto. I hadn’t even untethered her soul yet. Her noncorporeal
self floated above the body on the plastic-covered sofa,
bound by a thin strand of ectoplasm. I was supposed to cut
this strand with magic or my silver knife and release the
soul. The knife had been passed to me by my mother, along
with my Agent status, when she died. In life and death, Mrs. Luccardi was a small, thin woman
with a head of white curls –- the kind of old lady my
mother used to call a "Q-tip". She glared at me through red
plastic spectacles. "I don’t care if I’m dead, missy. I’m not leaving my
babies," she snapped. "Besides, look at you. I’m supposed
to believe you’re an Agent of death? You’re covered in
flour." "I was in the middle of making a pear tart dotted with
gorgonzola. You’re an unscheduled call. Besides," I said,
pointing to my back, "don’t you think the wings are a clue?" She continued to eye me with suspicion. OK, so a ten-foot
wingspan of black feathers probably looked a little
incongruous with my "Kiss Me, I’m Irish" apron and my fuzzy
blue house slippers. Patrick was always telling me I would
have less trouble if I presented a more imposing image, if
I looked a little more Reaper-like. I always tell him that
it’s pretty near impossible to be imposing when you’re only
five feet tall and generally described by others as "cute
as a button". Of course, if Patrick had shown up for his scheduled
escort of Mrs. Luccardi, I wouldn’t be here at all. He’d
called me fifteen minutes ago, said he had a "personal
emergency" (read: a date with a hot guy), and begged me to
take this pickup for him. I’d agreed because I owed Patrick
a favor or two, but I couldn’t be held responsible for my
appearance. "Listen, Mrs. Luccardi," I said through gritted
teeth. "You’re going to a better place. I’ll make sure that
someone comes to take care of your…babies." "Oh, no. Harold, my son, will come and have them all taken
to shelters. I’m not going anywhere. I have to look out for
them." She crossed her arms, set her jaw and looked for
all the world like she had no intention of moving in the
next millennium. I wondered how, exactly, she expected to
prevent Harold from having the cats taken away when she
didn’t have a corporeal self. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to argue points of logic
with the illogical dead. I glanced at my watch, a slender,
silver-linked affair that had been a 13th birthday present
from my mother. I really had to go. The potential tenant
was scheduled to knock on my door in fifteen minutes. It
would probably take me that long to fly home. "Polly Frances Luccardi, will you permit me to untether
your soul and escort you to the Door?" I asked. "No!" "Polly Frances Luccardi, will you permit me to untether
your soul and escort you to the Door?" I asked again. "I already told you, no!" I felt the familiar buildup of pressure in my chest that
accompanied a magical binding. It was what I imagined it
would be like to drown. My lungs and heart felt like iron
bands squeezed my organs; my ribcage felt like it was
collapsing. If I asked again and she refused, the binding
was sealed. She would never be escorted to the Door, but
would haunt this earth forever. "Polly Frances Luccardi, will you permit me to untether
your soul and escort you to the Door?" I asked. The
pressure increased and I gasped for breath. "For the last time, no!" My heart and lungs reinflated; my ribs sprung back into
place. A surge of power pushed out of my fingertips and
snapped the tether holding Mrs. Luccardi to her body. A lot
of Agents untethered agreeable souls using magic, but I
didn’t like it. I don’t know what a binding felt like to
anyone else but it made me feel like elephants had been tap
dancing on me. Give me a silver knife and straightforward
cut any day. Unfortunately, I could only use my knife on
the cooperative. No one knew exactly why, but souls that
refused the Door had to go through the rigmarole of a
binding. "Polly Frances Luccardi, by your own words and of your own
volition, your soul is bound to this earth for eternity," I
said, a little breathless. "Fine. My babies!" she cried, holding her incorporeal arms
out to the cats that were now starting to nibble her
corporeal body’s ankles. Whatever. I got out of there before she realized that her
little Snoogums was about to make her former shell into
breakfast, lunch and dinner. If I had more time, I would
have tried harder to convince her to go to the Door. Now I
would have to file more paperwork, and Patrick would have
to file more paperwork, and he would bitch about it and I
would bitch about it and J.B., our supervisor, would be an
annoying bastard about the whole thing because he’s very
insistent on closed lists. But I’d deal with that later.
First, I had to get home in time to show the apartment, and
I only had a few minutes.
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