Confession. I bought this book for the cover. But have you seen the cover? it's frikkin gorgeous. Maybe the most beautiful book cover I've ever seen. The book was good, it might not have been one of my all time favorites, but the plot was good the characters had a little depth - though I'd argue they could have evolved more as the book(s) progress.

And the world that Liz Williams creates is one that sticks with you. ( )

Dnf @ 15%

This book didn't catch my attention unfortunately. Maybe I'll try it again later. ( )

Really more like a 3.5 stars for me. An interesting mix of a police procedural, magic and mythology that didn't completely gel for me. I was interested and entertained enough to finish and will read the next one in the series, but it was a bit of a slog in places.

( )

Giving up on page 65, mostly because I'm just not connecting with or hooked by it. I like our demon protag more than our human protag, but neither of them is really delivered in rich and interesting detail. I'm very interested in Inari, but she's delivered in dribs and drabs without deep emotional connection.

The book is ill-served (for me) by some other decisions. Weirdly, I find the typeset design unhelpful to my engagement - the text is almost full out to the edges of the page, which only emphasises a prose style that runs to long paragraphs without dialogue (and made me a little weary every time I turned a page). And I'm made very uncomfortable by the author's decision to use the deprecated and Western Wade-Giles romanisation, rather than the Chinese-preferred and official Pinyin. (I'm also made mildly uncomfortable by the decision to refer to the hero's Guanyin prayer beads as a rosary, though I appreciate it's possibly a technically correct usage.)

The Housemate has been raving about these books for several months, so I thought I'd dive in in December, a month which, so far, has not been what I would call either comforting or joyous. Fortunately, she was dead right about the Inspector Chen novels. Snake Agent, the first of the series, is an intriguingly different sort of detective fiction which takes place in a world where magic, magical creatures, gods and goddesses, heaven, hell, demons and ghosts all have a role to play in the mystery of a young woman whose soul is stolen after her death, and wrongly sent to Hell.

Detective Inspector Wei Chen, a human detective who nevertheless is quite familiar with the supernatural, takes on the case with the help of a demonic detective who also has a stake in the outcome. Chen serves the goddess Kuan Yin, but they're not on the best of terms because he has married a demon who he rescued from Hell. When his beloved wife is forcibly returned to Hell, he knows he's on his own.

I'm not as conversant with Chinese culture as I might wish to be, so much of Williams' story was even stranger to me than it might otherwise have been. The series has been likened to The Dresden Files books, or John Constantine's adventures, and I think both are apt, but it's very much outside the western fantasy sphere. It is deeply eastern, deeply Chinese in flavor, and for me that meant taking in an extra layer of meaning and experience. It's not difficult since Williams is a good writer, and it makes the reading all the more rewarding.

If you're up for something different, something fantastic, mysterious, and well-written, you might want to give the first book of the series a try. The mystery is solid, the characters won me over, and the humor is subtle. I'm anxious to read the next book in the series now. ( )