I LURVE urban fantasy, but I'm noting that most of what I read tops out at 2 stars. Why? Well, first of all, most of what is billed as urban fantasy is really paranormal romance. I love the mysticism & magic of fantasy juxtaposed with the chaos and cynicism of modern life. What I don't care for (I'm looking at you Paranormal Romance) is a "hard as nails" heroine banging every dude that sniffs her supernatural pheromones.

Enter Jane Yellowrock, hard as nails vampire hunter and skin walker. She despises everything feminine and/or related to the XX chromosome...and she doesn't much like men either. Unless they're either the hunky blood slave of NOLA's master vamp, or the hunky "fly by the seat of his pants" cop. Will she have sex with either of them? With both? I won't spoil it for you.

So why the heck did I pick this book up? I was on a binge at the library, looking for something dark. I grabbed this, plus 3 other novels off the New Fiction shelf. Plus I love the South, which lends its own special creepiness to urban fantasy. Unfortunately, Faith Hunter wasted a fantastic setting. She tried to do too much with this novel, she ended up wasting chapters on exposition dumps, picking up and dropping characters at random, and botching the pacing entirely.

This book started off at a low 3 stars, for it's ideas and NOLA, but finished out at a measly one star, since I skimmed at least 75-100 pgs of useless yapping and rehashing.