Spider’s Bite – Jennier Estep
I first heard of Jennifer Estep and her Elemental Assassin books when she wrote a guest post in John Scalzi's Big Idea "column". Reading about her reasons for starting the Elemental Assassin series was enough to make me want to get hold of the first book.
Spider's Bite is the first book in the Elemental Assassin series. The story unfolds in a strange version of the American city of Ashland. Dwarves, giants, vampires and humans coexist in the city, and to make everything a bit more extraordinary some people also have elemental magic - hence the name of the series.
The main character, Gin, is an assassin that has a bit of both Stone and Ice magic. Gin enjoys her job and she is good at it, but her life takes an upleasant turn when her handler is killed.
The book delivers on its promise to be fun read. Something is happening all the time, and even though the story is a bit predictable it has enough twists and turns to be entertaining to the very end. Just what I had hoped to get out of the book.
Ashland's place in the larger world is rarely talked about, and the deeper consequences of adding magic to our society is never explored more than necessary. Even with the magic and all the strange races everything seems just like a twisted version of our own world.
The characters in the book are all well made. Each of them have their own small quirks, and each of them has a back story that that you want to learn a bit more about. Most of them seem a bit one sided, either good or bad, but given the quick pace of the story the easy separation feels just right. Few of the people in the story undergo any real change, but this being a fun and easy read I had not expected that either.
In her quest for revenge Gin is joined by two other characters. One is a long time friend who has plenty of reason to tag along, and he plays an important role in the story. Both as a person that contrasts well with Gin, and as a character that has skills that Gin needs. The other character does not fit that well into the story. Without spoiling anything he felt like a strange add on to the story that never served any real purpose. It got a bit better as the book progressed, but he never felt like the same natural fit as most other characters.
One of the things that really impressed me with Jennifer Estep's writing was her description food. One of Gin's hobbies is cooking, and it has to be a passion of Jennifer Estep as well. Every once it a while she would give a detailed description of the food. It was rarely the fancy food that got described, but instead the sandwiches Gin made at home or the salad she prepared at the restaurant she worked. Each time the descriptions left my mouth watering.
Jennifer Estep's description of the sex scenes was also very detailed, at times a bit too much. I feel that sex scenes in book rarely add anything special so they can usually be boiled down to "and then they had hot and passionate sex" without loosing anything. Unfortunately I felt the same way when I read through this book. Luckily it did not happen too often, and it was easy to skim through until the story got going again.
In the end the book left me wanting to know more about Gin and the world around her. It was a very entertaining read, and I can recommend it to anyone looking for a fast and easy book with a bad-ass main character.