I can't help myself. I keep going back to Christine Feehan's Carpathian books, even though some of the recent ones have been less than stellar. (I gave the previous one 6/10 and wasn't exactly bowled over by it.) I still like the basic premise and I like the way she's been developing an overall story arc lately. I like the addition of the wizards and now there are dragons as well, which always gives a story or series extra points in my book. So I read the bad ones, enjoy the good parts of those and keep hoping the next one will be good.

I had high hopes for Dark Demon. More for the heroine - we met Natalya briefly in Dark Destiny where it was clearly indicated that Vikirnoff would be her lifemate - than the hero, who seemed to be a typically over-alpha male such as Feehan writes regularly and really needs to tone down. Happily, she did. Vikirnoff had some nice, steady character development as he discovered that he hadn't really had a clue when he's imagined the perfect lifemate and that Natalya is exactly what he both wants and needs. Natalya too moved steadily from seeing him as an enemy to loving him. She also had a good and sensible reason for disliking and distrusting him at first, that dissolved as she got to know him. Too often, Feehan's heroines move from "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you" to "I love you" over the course of about a page and without any truly sensible reason for doing so beside the fact the author deems it time. Dark Demon escaped this common problem and was a much better and stronger book for it.

Natalya is part Carpathian, part mage, part tiger - the granddaughter of a Carpathian woman stolen away from her lifemate by a dark wizard to bear his children and thereby make him immortal. She has been indoctrinated since childhood to hate the Carpathians, seeing hunters and vampires as the same kind of evil. She has come to the Carpathian mountains under a compulsion she doesn't understand, aware she is followed and hunted all the way. Virkinoff is one of those following her, determined to find her for reasons he doesn't fully understand himself since seeing her picture back in his brother's book, Dark Destiny. Their meeting shows him she is his lifemate - something she's not convinced about - and from there the story takes off, mixing romance, vampires, dark pasts, Carpathian history and a whole lot of potential disaster. While the immediate problems are solved within this book, there's clearly still evil out there with plans against all the Carpathians and especially the prince.

We're clearly building towards a major confrontation here, which may or may not take place in the upcoming reunion book Dark Celebration. Like I said, I can't help myself I keep reading the books and hoping each time I'll get a good one rather than the opposite. I hope Feehan can stay with the tone and set up she produced in this book. It was a good self-contained story and a good step along the overal story arc as well. Keep it up, Christine. Please don't backslide again.

Oh, and I loved the revelation of previously unknown elements to the long time alliance between Mikhail's family and Gregori's family.

Cover Blurb:
     The popular fantasy novel Tinker introduced the inventor-heroine of the same name, who lives in a near-future Pittsburgh, which shares an interdimensional border with the land of the elves. In this sequel, Wolf Who Rules, the elven noble whose destiny is intertwined with Tinker, finds himself besieged from all sides. Viceroy and head of the Wind Clan, he had been able to guarantee the safety of everyone in his realm, but faced with an oni invasion, he has had to call in royal troops and relinquish his monopoly of Pittsburgh, which is now entirely stranded on Elfhome. He now struggles to keep the peace between the humans, the newly arrived Stone Clan, the royal forces, a set of oni dragons, the half-oni children who see themselves as human, and the tengu trying to escape their oni enslavement. Meanwhile, Tinker strives to solve the mystery of a growing discontinuity in Turtle Creek. She's plagued with inexplicable nightmares that may hold the keys to Pittsburgh's future. The only clue from the Queen's oracle to help Tinker is a note with five English words on it: Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Oni, and dragons and tengu - oh my!

I became a Wen Spencer fan after Barbara-the-pusher (my affectionate nickname for my specialist bookseller who treats enabling as a God-given duty) gave me Alien Taste to read. From there it was a case of 'the rest is history' and I've read everything she's written, I watch her livejournal and hang out for hints and tipbits of her upcoming books. I read Tinker from the library when it came out in hardcover, then bought my own paperback copy when that was released. I have several books that sit on my bookshelves unread because I'd read them by borrowing them from a library or a friend, but still needed my own copy. Tinker was one of these. When the sequel, Wolf Who Rules, was soon to be released, I spent a fair bit of time tossing up whether or not to buy it in hardcover. In the end, I succumbed to the temptation and ordered it. However, with my poor memory, there was a lot of Tinker I didn't remember, along with a few things I hadn't fully grapsed the first time around and I wanted it all to be fresh and clear before starting Wolf Who Rules.

I finished my reread today - and loved it the second time around, which is always a good thing.

Tinker is set in a near future Pittsburgh, where twenty years earlier a hyperdimensional gate was opened to facilite travel to the stars, with the unfortunate side-effect that a neatly circular section of Pittsburg got transported into an alternate reality called Elfhome where magic is stronger than on Earth. In the past, natural gates existed and it was through those that limited travel had occured between Earth and Elfhome, leading to humanity's legends of elves. Once a month, the gate is shut down for 24 hours, returning Pittsburgh to Earth and allowing the influx of goods, ideas and travellers.

Tinker is eighteen, a genius and has lived her entire life in the Elfhome part of Pittsburgh. She runs a scrapyard and spends much of her spare time putting her huge intellect to work inventing pretty much anything she chooses. As the book begins, the Elven noble, Windwolf, is chased into Tinker's scrapyard and injured just as Shutdown begins. This leave her stranded with him in Pittsburg on Earth without the benefit of magic to help him heal. With some help, she manages to keep him alive and finds her life forever twisted up with his and that of the all the elves.

Add to this some serious culture clash and misunderstandings and the reappearance of an ancient enemy of the elves who see Tinker and her genius as a way to open their own gate to Elfhome for an invasion and you have a clever, swift and intelligent novel that moves at breakneck pace and leaves the reader fully satisfied.

On my first reading, I had a little trouble with some of the scientific principles of just what had happened to Pittsburgh and how the gate effects worked. Rereading cleared this up very nicely for me as instead of being thrown in at the deep end in the first chapter, I was able to take the worldbuilding as clarification that helped me 'get' Spencer's world much more clearly. The same was true of the gate physics, that became significant in the last quarter of the book. It is well-written, without large amounts of technobabble or handwaving, so don't be afraid of the word 'physics'. It was much clearer this time and I can now head into Wolf Who Rules happy knowing that I pretty much understand what has gone before.

I gave this book 9/10 last time and I'm giving it 10/10 this time. Spencer has real talent - not to mention that all three of her series so far are very different from each other and her current work promises to be different again - and I suspect I will continue to buy her books in hardcover now that I've broken the first time. I won't be able to wait long enough for the paperbacks.