What Jeaniene Frost Did Right

So recently, my friend Amanda sent me a link to an old blog post by Jeaniene Frost, author of the Night Huntress series, wherein her character Bones gets into it with Ilona Andrews’ character Kate Daniels. Now, up until this point I hadn’t read anything by either of these authors, but the post cracked me up and left me motivated to download Halfway To The Grave, the first Night Huntress book. And then, about 36 hours later, at 1am, I downloaded the 2nd one.

God I love my Kindle.

The Amazon reviews for Halfway To The Grave ranged from three to five stars. That and $5 will get you a fancy cup o’ joe most anyplace you go. The reason I liked the book had more to do with how many things I saw Ms. Frost doing well. These days I find it increasingly difficult to turn off my writer-brain as I read, and I was just so impressed by what I saw in this book. Here’s a list of the top three things I thought she got right in Halfway To The Grave.

I’ll try hard not to include spoilers, but no guarantees…

#1 She started strong

I  stiffened at the red and blue lights flashing behind me, because there was no way I could explain what was in the back of my truck.

Now that’s a solid hook. You have tension, you have intrigue, you have vulnerability. You’re immediately in the moment, trying not to panic with this person who’s trying to hide something from the cops. I’m generally pretty law-abiding, but could totally relate to that flash of guilt.

Over the first chapter, the author carefully works in details, laying the foundation for Cat’s character. There’s something different about her. She has no friends and her only boyfriend ended badly. She doesn’t know her father and has huge Mommy issues (hello, go kill vampires for your mother!). And then, imho, Ms. Frost saves the cat. She drops in a little something that said more about the unhealthy nature of the mother-daughter relationship than just about anything I could have come up with. Here:

My mother was asleep in the room we shared.

Um, ick. She’s in her twenties and still sharing a room with her mother? Who has boundary issues? The quote goes on:

I’d tell her about it in the morning. It was the first question she asked on the weekends. Did you get one of those things, Catherine? Well, yes, I did!

Honestly, the first time I read it, the main thing I remembered from the first chapter was that Cat still shared a room with her mother. If Cat is broken, I gotta think Justina pretty much raised her to be. From my understanding of Blake Snyder’s book, the purpose of the Save The Cat moment is to give the main character an added dimension, one that makes the reader care about them. The shared bedroom thing did it for me.

#2 Likeable characters

Cat is complicated. She snores and hogs the covers, she doesn’t deal with her Mom very well, she’s ballsy and resilient. She’s a very relatable character, although I’ve never been half vampire and likely never will be. There’s a lot going on in there, and a lot to like.

And I have to say that for me, there might be even more to like in the character Bones. Now, I haven’t read many of the reviews &/or blog discussions of this book, so maybe what I’ve got to say is yesterday’s news, but does he remind anyone else of a certain platinum-haired vampire with an English accent? Here’s his first line of dialogue that’s more than two words long:

Bad timing, luv. Have to wait until later. Be a good bird and fly away, I’ll find you.

When I read that for the first time, I heard the voice of Spike. Now, after having read two books in the series, which provide ample evidence that Bones is NOT Spike, I still hear James Marsders.  Bollocks pet, Bones sounds just like Spike. IMHO, that’s not a bad thing. If you’re going to borrow from someone, go for the best.

And then there’s the small matter of SEXUAL CHEMISTRY THAT’S SO HOT I THOUGHT IT MIGHT MELT MY KINDLE.

Um, I’m going to let you discover your own examples for that one. (And yes, Book 2 Ch 32 IS all that.)

#3. Internal transformation

Like the good little writer I am, I’ve studied plot and character development, and have a working familiarity with both Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Christopher Vogler’s work. I know your characters are supposed to change and grow over the course of the story, both on the level of their external circumstances and their internal environment.

Ms Frost deftly structures Cat’s development. She changes from a loner who has staked a few vampires to being Queen of the World (well, not really, but I don’t want to give any spoilers away), though frankly, it’s the external change that I have the most quibbles with. She gets some kind of exponential magic boost right near the end that turns her into a super-staker, which is cool and all, but was sort of extreme.

It’s the internal change in Cat that I find most satisfying. At the opening of the story, vampires are all bad, all the time. They’re all trying to get her and she has no problem with killing them. In fact, she gets her mother’s approval by doing it. Things are so black and white for her that it comes as shock when she learns there might be something good about vampire blood.

Vampire blood heals?

That happens on page 28. About ten pages later, she has her first semi-positive thought about Bones.

He laughed again. It transformed his face into something I just realized was very beautiful. I looked away, not wanting to see him as anything but a monster. A dangerous monster.

I’m kind of in awe of the way Ms. Frost wove details throughout the story, letting Bones educate Cat and creating a realistic change in the way Cat views vampires and herself. You could probably quibble about the fact that it took the love of a strong vampire to help Cat grow up, but the love story is so integral to the plot that there’s really no point otherwise. When it comes right down to it, it’s up to Cat to take the risk and to allow herself to change, and that part was beautifully done.

And in the end (at the risk of spoiling it for everyone) she is no longer sharing a room with her mother, which was a huge relief to me.

So thank you, Amanda, for introducing me to this series. I’d seen it before but hadn’t picked it up because I figured it was cut from the same cloth as the Lords of the Underworld by Gina Showalter. Nothing against those books – I’ve read four or five – but you know what you’re getting. The Night Huntress books are very different, and a whole lot of fun.

If any of you lovely Rancourtesans have suggestions for paranormal series, leave them in the comments…I’m always up for something new. Have a great weekend!

Peace,

Liv