Title: Tainted

Author: Julie Kenner

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Ace
Publication Date: October 2009
Paperback: 320 pages

Stand alone or series: Book 1 in the Blood Lily Chronicles

How did I get this book: ARC (from publicist)

Why did I read this book: When we were contacted with a review query for Julie Kenner’s debut Urban Fantasy novel, I read the synopsis for Tainted and was definitely interested – it sounded gritty, dark, and right up my Urban Fantasy alley.

Summary: (from JulieKenner.com)
Lily Carlyle has never been a good girl. She’s lied, cheated and stolen, but she did it all to protect her younger sister. To keep food on the table after their mother died. She’d made a promise, after all. A promise to take care of her sister. To keep the family together. And that’s a promise she’s determined to keep.

It’s a job she believes she can really get into-but she doesn’t realize that she may not be able to get out…

Review:

Lily Carlyle is dead.

Her last memory is of a the man she kills before she dies of her own fatal wounds. Even through the haze of pain and death, Lily is at peace, because she thinks she has finally killed the monster that had brutally raped and stolen the innocence from her younger sister, Rose. But Lily doesn’t stay dead. She’s rescued from the pits of Hell and given a second lease on life in another young woman’s body with one catch; she has to work as an assassin for Heaven. Turns out, Lily’s a prophesied warrior – the only one who will be able to stop the ninth gate to hell from opening and unleashing a demonic apocalypse on Earth. In exchange for working as a demon slayer and keeping the ninth gate closed, Lily has a chance to be redeemed and gain entry into Heaven. The path to redemption is even rockier than Lily ever could have expected, though, as she has to not only deal with demons hungry for her blood, but also must pretend to be the woman whose body she has taken over – one Alice Purdue, a twenty-some year old young woman. Lily masquerades as Alice, going to her job as a barmaid and improvising with Alice’s old relationships. Even more difficult than playacting at Alice’s life, however, is the growing darkness within Lily as she learns more about demons and how to kill them. And then, there’s the perplexing matter of Deacon – a preternaturally strong and terrifying man that Lily feels an inexplicable connection to; a man she cannot get out of her head, nor can she elude. As the hour draws closer for Lily to finish her task, she grows increasingly confused and angry. Who can she trust? And what can she do to protect the innocent bystanders that could be hurt – including her very own sister from her first life, Rose?

Tainted is a compelling start to a very dark new urban fantasy series. As the glittery allure of Urban Fantasy has been wearing off with the myriad copycat series’ clogging the market (all depicting some tough, hot twenty-some year old badass heroine, clad in leather with an enormous attitude problem and a tramp stamp) it’s tough for a new series to really distinguish itself in the sea of redundancy and mediocrity. Tainted employs a number of genre clichés (twenty-something badass, attitude problem, cheesy tattoo, badass fighting ability, with save-the-world-and-don’t-trust-anyone syndrome), and yet by virtue of its clever plot manages to entertain thoroughly.

In terms of characters, Tainted is nothing new or groundbreaking. Heroine Lily reads like a number of any other UF leading ladies – abrasive, headstrong, badass but with her heart in the right place (even if her methods are a little questionable, ethically). That doesn’t mean she’s boring or unsympathetic, though – even with this rather familiar, mundane characterization, Lily’s narrative is snappy and easy to read. As a heroine she’s sympathetic in that she’s so hard on herself, and for all her flaws she has a deep rooted urge to keep her word and protect those she loves – and those are admirable traits. Predictably, Lily also has a love interest in the smoldering, morally compromised Deacon. From the moment these two characters set eyes on each other, they fall into instant lust – Lily cannot control her sexual urges when Deacon’s in close proximity (which induces more than a little eye rolling). Other characters are more varied and interesting, in particular Lily’s new mentor Clarence, a lackey from heaven sent to deal especially with Lily’s prickly personality.

If the characters were clichéd and leave readers wanting, the plot certainly makes up for them. Ms. Kenner puts a fresh spin on the Heaven versus Hell/ Good versus Evil battle by means of a gradually building mystery that turns all preconceived notions of UF plot tropes on their heads. Over the course of the book, little hints and inconsistencies begin to add up, leading to a very effective twist. I don’t want to say to much for fear of spoilers – but I will say that I loved where Ms. Kenner took Tainted. Concluding with a nail-biter of an ending, I found myself really enjoying this book almost in spite of myself. And I’m pretty thrilled that I don’t have to wait long to read the next two books in the series, as Torn and Turned come out very soon.

Notable Quotes/Parts: The Prologue:

“. . . And by her hand that which would be open may be closed . . .”
—The Prophecy of the Orb

Can I just say that dying sucks?

All that bullshit about seeing the light and having this final moment of inner peace, blah, blah, blah. It’s crap.

Dying is messy and terrifying and it hurts like hell.

I ought to know. After all, I was the one on that basement floor in a puddle of my own blood and bile. And there was no peace, no light, no anything. Nothing except the ice-cold knowledge that the sins I’d racked up in the last twelve or so hours were more than sufficient to push me through the gates of hell.

Forget everything else I’d done in my twenty-six years on this earth, good and bad. You go out planning to kill a man—even a man as vile as Lucas Johnson—and your fate is pretty much sealed.

From a practical standpoint, the moment of death is a little bit late to start getting all profound and reflective. As they say, what’s done is done. But that doesn’t matter, because even if you’re the least introspective person on the planet, you still go through the whole Psych 101 rigmarole. You tell yourself that maybe you should have said your bedtime prayers once in a while. You wonder if all those torture-porn horror movies you watched while your boyfriend copped a feel weren’t actually a sneak peek into what hell had to offer.

In other words, you get scared.

When you’re living, you might tell God to take a flying leap for putting your mother six feet under when you were only fourteen. For leaving you with a stepfather who decided to cuddle up with Jack Daniels because he no longer had a loving wife in his bed. For leaving you in charge of a pigtailed little half-sister who thought you hung the moon.

And for making you arrogant enough to swear that you’d protect that precious kid no matter what, even though that wasn’t a promise you could keep. Not when there are monsters like Lucas Johnson trolling the earth. Monsters who suck the life from little girls.

For all those reasons, you might turn your back on God, and think you’re oh-so-righteous for doing it. But you’d be wrong.

Trust me. I know.

I know, because even as my life faded, the fires of hell nipped at my toes.

In the end, I got lucky. But then again, luck is all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

You can read the first two chapters online HERE.

Additional Thoughts: The next two titles in The Blood Lily Chronicles are already written and are scheduled for rapid-fire release! Torn, book 2 was released on November 24, and Turned will be out in stores on December 29th. This minimum waiting time between books is pretty awesome for little ol’ impatient me, so I’ll be scooping these up soon.

On a slightly critical note though, while I do like the color scheme and model for the covers, I am not crazy about Lily’s dagger. It looks like a mini-pirate sword and just…not very threatening. She looks like a halloween costume swashbuckler. Any thoughts?

Verdict: Though Ms. Kenner relies heavily on genre clichés in terms of characters and themes, Tainted has such an enjoyable plot that those shortcomings are worth overlooking. I certainly enjoyed Tainted, and am eager to pick up copies of Torn and Turned!

Reading Next: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Giveaway Details:

We are giving away a copy of Tainted to ONE lucky winner! The contest is open to residents of the US, Canada and the UK, and will run until Saturday November 28 at 11:59 pm (PST). To enter, simply leave a comment here letting us know what your badass weapon of choice would be if you were an Urban Fantasy hero/heroine. One entry per person, please! Multiple or duplicate entries will be disqualified. Good luck!

Hi-yo! Another weekend, another stash. First, a few announcements…

Giveaway Winner:

The lucky winner of a copy of M.L.N. Hanover’s Darker Angels, book 2 in The Black Sun’s Daughter series, is…

Congratulations! You know the drill – send an email to contact AT the book smugglers DOT com with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your winnings out to you as soon as possible! Thanks to all that entered, and if you didn’t win this time, don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from.

Smugglerific Announcements:

Well, folks, it is official! You are now looking at the two newest bloggers for the fabulous Tor.com – home of Science Fiction, Fantasy, The Universe, and Related Subjects!

We are honored and thrilled to be part of the Tor blogging family, and are diligently working on our very first post there (which will be about Brandon Sanderson’s completely awesome Mistborn Trilogy). We’ll keep you up-to-date on our progress, and let you know once our inaugural post hits the site.

And in another big announcement, it’s nearly December…which means it’s almost time for Smugglivus! We have a number of fabulous guests lined up for this year’s event, and a shiny new poster in the works (thanks to the lovely KMont of Lurv a la Mode). Here’s a little teaser:

For those new to the site, Smugglivus (based on the non-denominational holiday, Festivus) is a monthlong celebration in which we invite our favorite authors and bloggers to post about their favorite books of the year, what they’re looking forward to in 2010, and what projects they have on the horizon. And of course, we end the celebration with the official rites – Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, and our very own Best of lists for the year, all culminating in our second year blogoversary.

Around the Internets:

Aidan Moher, prolific fantasy blogger that runs A Dribble of Ink posted last week about the irritations of repetitive fantasy covers, citing the art for Brent Weeks’ new title. This week, the debate concerning fantasy covers – innovation versus familiarity – rages on, in this thought-provoking discussion provoked by the upcoming cover of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur. We highly recommend checking out the comments – there are great points made on both sides of the cover argument.

In other news, we’d like to direct your attention to a new website, called The 5th Shelf. At first glance it looks a little like Shelfari and GoodReads had a lovechild – which isn’t too far off base. The 5th Shelf is a new website that is devoted to creating a “modern” version of the Harvard Classics (a 51-volume anthology of classic literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot in 1909). You can set up a free account on The 5th Shelf, and, as with GoodReads or other book networking sites, add your very own authoritative shelf of classics. The definitive list will be composed form the consensus of all members – which is pretty damn cool. We’ve signed up – you can check out the beginnings of our shelf HERE. And we hope others will sign up too!

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Thea reviews the highly anticipated new release from Pandemonium author Daryl Gregory, The Devil’s Alphabet. Will it live up to expectations, or fizzle flat?

Tuesday, Thea reviews Sarah Beth Durst’s newest novel Ice, a retelling of the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. Then, Ana reviews The Stepsister Scheme, the first in Jim C. Hines’ Princess Series.

Wednesday, Thea reviews Tainted by Julie Kenner, a new urban fantasy title, with a giveaway. Ana takes on The Mermaid’s Madness the second book from Jim C. Hines’ Princess Series.

Thursday, Thea takes a break and eats far too much Turkey while Ana reviews Madam Xanadu Volume 1: Disenchanted from Matt Wagner.

Friday, we close out the week with a joint review of the much lauded new release from Lev Grossman, The Magicians.

It’s another busy week here at The Book Smugglers, and we invite you to pull up a chair, enjoy some delicious Thanksgiving food, and relax.

Until tomorrow!

~ Your friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers