Enemy of Entropy

Review: Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner

9 December 2007, 12:48 am. 4 Comments. Filed under Health, Humor, Needlework, Reading.

Cover of Carpe DemonI’m way behind on book reviews, so I’ll try to do one each day for a bit. Empha­sis on the try. I’ve read some great stuff lately that deserves the attention!

I’ll start with the most recent book, Carpe Demon by Julie Ken­ner. It’s the first book of the Demon-​​Hunting Soc­cer Mom series. I don’t actu­ally remem­ber any soc­cer games, but yep, Kate Con­nor is def­i­nitely a soc­cer mom in the sense that Clin­ton used the phrase.

I can’t remem­ber if it was Michelle Sagara West or Tanya Huff who said it, but either way, I agree with her that the best way to sum up this series is to imag­ine that Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer grew up, got mar­ried, and had kids, but didn’t tell her fam­ily any­thing about her past. Kate works for the Vat­i­can instead of the Watcher’s Coun­cil, has an Ali­men­ta­tore rather than a Watcher, and isn’t the Cho­sen One — there are sup­posed to be many demon hunters. Unfor­tu­nately, the youth of today aren’t as easy to recruit, accord­ing to the Church, and an old demon hunter is usu­ally a dead demon hunter.

Kate and her part­ner, Eric, had retired and moved to a place they iden­ti­fied as hav­ing very lit­tle demon activ­ity. They had a child, and after Eric died (we don’t learn how in this vol­ume), Kate remar­ried. Stu­art Con­nor is an attor­ney with polit­i­cal ambi­tion. Remem­ber how Sab­rina had so much trou­ble pre­tend­ing to be a nor­mal executive’s wife in Bewitched? Take it up sev­eral notches, and you know where some of the book’s humor comes from. The novel is def­i­nitely a nice depar­ture from the para­nor­mal romances that have a lot more romance than action, although I have yet to fig­ure out why Kate would ever have set­tled for Stu­art. And yes, I’d have to say she set­tled.1

I’ve put the next two books, Cal­i­for­nia Demon and Demons are For­ever, on my wish list. I’m look­ing for­ward to find­ing out how Ken­ner devel­ops the char­ac­ters, and whether Kate starts fill­ing her kids’ water bot­tles with holy water (I would). I’m not a big enough fan to put the rest of her books on the pile, but I haven’t ruled it out yet.

1 Of course, so did Sabrina.

4 Comments »

  1. avatar Hope. 9 December 2007, 7:46 pm

    I really enjoy your book reviews :)

    Looks like Book­Mooch has book two — if I’ll send it to you, if it’s actu­ally available.

  2. avatar Tweets for Today | Enemy of Entropy. 9 December 2007, 10:03 pm

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  3. avatar Krista. 10 December 2007, 2:26 am

    I have read all of them and really enjoyed them. They get bet­ter– she really inter­weaves the tale and it explores the mother-​​daughter dynamic well.

  4. avatar cyn. 10 December 2007, 2:18 pm

    I’m glad to hear that, Krista. I did find the “mom” bits very, very accu­rate. Have you read any of Kenner’s other work? I saw that she’d done some young adult nov­els, won­dered if my girl might like them.

 

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