T. A. Pratt

Hoping to save her city from a powerful rival out to destroy her, sorcerer Marla Mason, heads for San Francisco in search of the Cornerstone, only to discover that some of San Francisco's sorcerers have fallen prey to a mysterious assailant.

Blood Engines

Michael Springer

Let me start off by saying this: Blood Engines is basically fluff. It is fast-paced, funny, hard-to-put-down . . . it's GOOD fluff. 

I haven't read much urban fantasy, partially because so much of it looks like shite. But, I'd seen the books in the Marla Mason series around and found the cover art compelling. And, Pratt's agent is an agent I've sent a query to, so I thought I should give one of her authors a shot. 

The idea is this: Marla Mason is a bad-ass sorceress who runs a city called. . . well, it starts with an F. She is currently in a modern-day San Francisco, seeking out an artifact. She's brought along her bisexual, wise-cracking homeboy, whose name I also can't remember. (I read this one a couple weeks ago. Cut me some slack.) But, local sorcerers are dropping like flies, and it looks like Marla is going to have to save the day. Along the way, she meets a pornomancer, a technomancer, a couple gods, and other cool characters, many of who die in mysterious ways because of a badguy named Mutinex, or something similar. Mutex? Mulex? Anyway. 

I am confident I'll be tracking down book two in this series, and I have an inclination I'll be reading the whole series. So, I recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun, urban fantasy light read. This one is genuinely fun, and isn't shite.

T.A. Pratt

Meet Marla Mason—smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast. . . . Sorcerer Marla Mason, small-time guardian of the city of Felport, has a big problem. A rival is preparing a powerful spell that could end Marla’s life—and, even worse, wreck her city. Marla’s only chance of survival is to boost her powers with the Cornerstone, a magical artifact hidden somewhere in San Francisco. But when she arrives there, Marla finds that the quest isn’t going to be quite as cut-and-dried as she expected . . . and that some of the people she needs to talk to are dead. It seems that San Francisco’s top sorcerers are having troubles of their own—a mysterious assailant has the city’s magical community in a panic, and the local talent is being (gruesomely) picked off one by one. With her partner-in-crime, Rondeau, Marla is soon racing against time through San Francisco’s alien streets, dodging poisonous frogs, murderous hummingbirds, cannibals, and a nasty vibe from the local witchery, who suspect that Marla herself may be behind the recent murders. And if Marla doesn’t figure out who is killing the city’s finest in time, she’ll be in danger of becoming a magical statistic herself. . . .

Blood Engines

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