Saturday, December 29, 2012

Blog Tour / Review: Sparks




Title - Sparks
Author - Laura Bickle
Series - Anya Kalinczyk #2
Genre - Urban Fantasy
Publication - August 31st 2010
Format - PDF Review copy
(Goodreads) & (Amazon)

Synopsis

WITHOUT A TRACE

Anya Kalinczyk is the rarest type of psychic medium, a Lantern, who holds down a day job as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department—while working 24/7 to exterminate malicious spirits haunting a city plagued by unemployment and despair. Along with her inseparable salamander familiar, Sparky, Anya has seen, and even survived, all manner of fiery hell—but her newest case sparks suspicions of a bizarre phenomenon that no one but her eccentric team of ghost hunters might believe: spontaneous human combustion.
After fire consumes the home of elderly Jasper Bernard, Anya is stunned to discover his remains—or, more precisely, a lack of them; even the fiercest fires leave some trace of their victims—and she is sure this was no naturally occurring blaze. Soon she’s unearthed a connection to a celebrity psychic who preys on Detroit’s poor, promising miracles for money. But Hope Solomon wants more—she’s collecting spirits, and in a frantic race against time, Anya will face down an evil adversary who threatens her fragile relationship with her lover, her beloved Sparky’s freshly hatched newts, and the wandering souls of the entire city


Review

I received Sparks as part of the blog tour hosted by Bewitching Book Tours in return for an honest review. Anya's days are divided between working as a arson investigator and dealing with out of control spirits. She's not alone in her adventure she's joined by her elemental familiar Sparky who happens to be a salamander plus her ghost hunting group. Anya isn't your typical Detroit girl she's a lantern which means that she can communicate with ghosts as well as she has the gift to eat them ending there existence. However life hasn't been easy with the accident that killed her mother, and being afraid to let anyone close she's had a hard time.

Anya has a new arson case that she's working on which involves spontaneous human combustion leaving very little remains behind. Jasper Bernard was a dealer is magic stuff from swords to bottles with bones in them, and when his all the magical artifacts go missing after his death Anya has more then just a case to solve. Hope Solomon is a celebrity psychic is in town collecting spirits for her own twisted plans. Anya is also trying to keep her relationship with Brian because after the scare in the first book when she almost lost him she's not ready to lose the chance again. Plus Sparkys has new babies thrown into the mix Anya has her hands full just keeping it together.

I really love Anya as a character she's grown so much from Ember and to me she just keeps getting better with age. This is only my second book about ghost but the concept for Anya's character being a lantern I find really unique. Plus she's in not your typical investigator she works for the fire department which is also new for me but I really like seeing a new form of investigator. As with the first book I love Sparky I want my own Sparky that's just like hers. The supernatural world that is created in the book works really well for the series, incorporating a variety of characters that work well. As with the first I found the book well written the story flows along smoothly making it easy to loose track of time while reading. Which this series has done a lot to me but it's that's alright it was worth it. As Sparks progresses we see Anya growing as a character from who she started out as in the first book. I highly suggest if your into ghosts and like a good suspense then you should check out Anya's series. I really hope for a third book because I have questions that still need answers.

5 out of 5

Author Bio

Laura Bickle has worked in the unholy trinity of politics, criminology, and technology for several years. She and her chief muse live in the Midwest, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats.

Her work has been published in Midnight Times, Down in the Cellar, MicroHorror, Theaker's Quarterly Fiction,Ballista , Byzarium, New Myths,a Blog-O-Novella office soap opera for True Office Confessions, and Aoife's Kiss. Her most recent project is the Embers series of urban fantasy novels for Juno-Pocket Books.

She can be e-mailed at: laura@salamanderstales.com. She's blogging on writing at: 
www.salamanderstales.blogspot.com.

She also writes under the name of 
Alayna Williams.

No comments:

Post a Comment