The only thing worse than having dozens of unread books on your shelf is when half of them are by people you’re friends with so you have the additional guilt of being TERRIBLY BEHIND on friends’ books.
The only thing better than reading books that have been on the TBR shelf for years is reading one by a friend and it turns out to be WONDERFUL. DESDAEMONA is one such book, written by–
–ah, see, now, this is where it gets meta. :)
Ben Macallan is the main character of Chaz Brenchley’s DEAD OF LIGHT and LIGHT ERRANT, both of which I enjoyed enormously (and lent my photography to for the e-book cover art! :)). DESDAEMONA is written by Ben Macallan…and it reads like it. I mean, reading it was like reading a book written by Ben, about whom Chaz has written. What a treat! I spent vast parts of the book basically kicking my feet and giggling from delight over the layers.
Aside from the wonderful meta glee of the book, DESDAEMONA is a really solid urban fantasy. Our hero is *laughs* seventeen and sort of tiresomely obsessed with sex, but that’s probably entirely appropriate, but more interestingly, he has a Mystery about him, which isn’t revealed until *well* into the book and is worth the wait when it is. Our titular heroine is A Strong Female Protagonist in all the right ways, and the comparative handful of secondary characters are the kind I fell madly in love with right away.
Furthermore, I love Chaz’s writing, which is lyrical except when he pauses to throw in a one-liner that’s funny both for the change of tone and the actual content, and which–the man can work the power of three like nobody else I know. The ebb and flow of his language choices are just beautiful, and I find reading it just for the rhythm as satisfying as the stories themselves. Verra nice stuff.