2011 urban fantasy, second of its series. Nola O'Grady, high-grade
psychic, continues to work for no-such-agency tracking down
supernatural threats to the people of San Francisco.
So. Yeah. I mean, the basic business of writing is competent, the
threats are interesting, but it all ends up feeling blah. And the
ethics are very situational.
There are parallel worlds! In at least one of them, there's lots of
radiation and everybody has a short and upleasant life. No, we won't
try to find out about them or make anything better for them, except
for the one girl whom Nola's nephew has fallen for. Looks as if
Missing Dad was originally from a parallel world, and the authorities
there have got him back and banged him up for unauthorised
world-hopping. They are therefore obviously Bad, and if breaking him
out of prison would be hard we'll at least do our own unauthorised
hopping to bring him back when he gets parole. But when someone from a
different parallel world says "this enemy of yours is a criminal, hand
him over to me", well, sure, of course we do that.
And when one of Nola's relatives turns out to have been running guns
to the Irish in the NORAID days, her rule-following Israeli boyfriend
has no problem with it: eh that's all fine it was a long time ago.
It's not as if he'd been running guns to the West Bank. (Yes, this is
said explicitly.)
Maybe Kerr's doing this deliberately, but I don't think so. I really
don't think she sees how the only difference between these cases is
whether whoever gets hurt by them is a real person we care about or
just one of them; or perhaps she doesn't care.
Said boyfriend, Ari Nathan, is a field of landmines: things considered
perfectly normal outside a high-patriarchal-religion environment, like
dressing as a prostitute as a disguise, cause him to lose his temper.
What a prize. And every time Nola disagrees with him, he's shown to be
right. What a protagonist.
And then Kerr gives herself licence for the bad guys to do anything
that's convenient for the plot: you can't do conventional
crime-solving on them because they're Agents of Chaos, and anything
that would make a pattern would be an Order thing! So you just have to
sit and wait for the author to give you a hint from your
uncontrollable visions…
There are two more of these, but I feel no enthusiasm for them.
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