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Friday, March 7, 2014

Sheep Book Review: Night Owls by Lauren M. Roy

Night Owls (Night Owls #1)
By: Lauren M. Roy
Paperback, 304 pages
Published February 25th 2014 by Ace


Night Owls book store is the one spot on campus open late enough to help out even the most practiced slacker. The employees’ penchant for fighting the evil creatures of the night is just a perk…

Valerie McTeague’s business model is simple: provide the students of Edgewood College with a late-night study haven and stay as far away from the underworld conflicts of her vampire brethren as possible. She’s lived that life, and the price she paid was far too high to ever want to return.

Elly Garrett hasn’t known any life except that of fighting the supernatural werewolf-like beings known as Creeps or Jackals. But she always had her mentor and foster father by her side—until he gave his life protecting a book that the Creeps desperately want to get their hands on.

When the book gets stashed at Night Owls for safe keeping, those Val holds nearest and dearest are put in mortal peril. Now Val and Elly will have to team up, along with a mismatched crew of humans, vampires, and lesbian succubi, to stop the Jackals from getting their claws on the book and unleashing unnamed horrors…



Night Owls is one of those books that has me rubbing my hands together cackling with glee at a new urban fantasy series in the making. The story starts out with a bang as Elly is running for her life and keeps on going from there introducing Val and the each of the characters in turn making up this wonderful world as the tale progresses. As we are introduced to the characters the storytelling is broken up into multiple points of view, which made a lot of sense in the world building and the how and why of the merging of the characters, especially since this is book one. The author has introduced a new twist on vampirism, as well as some of the more well-known thoughts, and blended them together composing a new concept. Of course we still run into the nasty power hungry vamps and also have a new collection of baddies called Jackals or Creeps who are well and truly creepily delicious zombified long-snouted folk, somewhat resembling Anubis, that rather than leaving a scent of myrrha in their wake, produce a scent of o-de-rot and wet dog. 

The story of course is one of good versus evil and protect the innocent and what a fun ride it is along the way. There is plenty of action with sword slicing, head lopping gore, gun toting, staking, and holy water sizzling to keep a UF fan content. There are even a couple of succubi that are absolutely delightful and can kick heinie with wonderfully vicious results. The world building, as well as the character development is very well executed and full of colorful intriguing folks I can't wait to get to read more about. The book, as with most series, concludes a bit open-ended and left me hungry for the next adventure to see what happens next. While there bloodshed and action galore, this is more of a lighter urban fantasy blended in with the dark and I definitely recommend it for fans of the genre. I received this book from NetGalley.

5 Sheep




DeniseZ

About the Author:
website
Lauren M. Roy has flexed her literary fantasy muscles over the past several years contributing to various role playing games, including Green Ronin's Dragon Age Set 3 sourcebook, Pelgrane Press' Mythos Expeditions anthology (part of the Trail of Cthulhu line), and Green Ronin's Song of Ice and Fire. NIGHT OWLS is her first novel.



5 comments:

  1. Yours is the first positive review I read about this book Denise, thank you. Now I am on the fence again.

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    Replies
    1. I do admit the the multiple POVs had me on the fence at first, but once I started to see the full picture it definitely kept me reading every moment I could :)

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  2. I loved your descriptions in this review. Sounds interesting.

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  3. Your fun review has me thinking this could be a very entertaining read.

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