The Ash Angels
by Ian Rogers
Burning Effigy
Press (Sept 2010)
40 pages
ISBN
9781926611099
I blogged a month or two ago about the first novella in Ian Roger's
gritty urban fantasy, the Felix Renn series. I quite like the
hard-boiled blending with dark fantasy and a dash of the Great White
North for flavor. Well, I got around to reading the second
installment, The Ash Angels, and while the book could work as
a stand-alone I thought it a good follow-up to the impressive debut.
It's Christmas time, and while Felix and his ex-wife are civil to
each other these days, he'd rather be alone--and drunk. He needs
something festive for a chaser while home alone, so he heads out to
find some eggnog and wides up with a mystery involving piles of ash
shaped like angels. It's a case that leads him from a funeral home
and ultimately to a familiar location from his recent past, all the
while trying to keep from winding up like the ashen corpses he finds.
The Ash Angels
has the same hard-boiled
approach to urban fantasy that I've come to enjoy from several
authors, and Ian has a great character with Felix Renn to explore
this world he's created. That said. this second installment didn't
come off quite as strong as the debut effort. The curse of the
sophomore book in a series, I suppose. It's not bad, quite the
contrary actually, but with such a powderkeg as Temporary
Monsters, I had my hopes set
really high on this one. Still a satisfying read, and I'm eager to
read the third installment, Black-Eyed Kids,
in the near future, which Ian intimated is his strongest work of the
three. Good to know.
If you're not on board the Felix Renn bandwagon, and you're a fan of
gritty urban fantasy, I suggest you remedy that.
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