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A review by kblincoln
Sin Eater by Samantha Lafantasie, Alesha Escobar
4.0
3.5 stars, actually.
It took me a little while to warm up to the story as I am more used to Urban Fantasy with one POV, this one switches a bit between the main folks. This is your usual UF modern milieu with sorcerors living amongst us...however the interesting bit here is that they are not secret. In the town where the story takes place, there is even a movement to "register" the sorcerers, with a bit of a timely political echo to what's happening in the U.S. right now.
Aria's sin-eating was a new for me. I liked the idea of her easing the transition between life and death for folks, but at times was left with an uneasy understanding of how/why sin eating fit into the overall magic system of the world. Like, if sin eaters are so rare, why does everyone seem so prejudiced against them? And what happens to the majority of folks if they are so rare? (in the book its said sorcerers weighed down by sin become vampires, but there weren't tons of vampires running about) and also apparently they are long-lived but this doesn't seem to impact Aria that much...so I was confused at times.
Once Aria the sin-eater, Harry the possessed PI and Jacob the sorcerer get together to fight an evil murderer that keeps changing names, things got a little easier to both figure out (since we discover some of the differently named bad guys are the same bad guy, and also what exactly is going on with Harry). And the relationships between these three as they figure out what the bad guy is up to certainly was interesting. I think I would liked to have seen more of the evil "vlad" possessing Harry, and also a tad bit more editing in some chapters...i.e. the book tells us one of Harry's possessing ghosts is a former loremaster like three times. I'd read the next one in the series, though, with the hopes that it would be like the second half of this book.
It took me a little while to warm up to the story as I am more used to Urban Fantasy with one POV, this one switches a bit between the main folks. This is your usual UF modern milieu with sorcerors living amongst us...however the interesting bit here is that they are not secret. In the town where the story takes place, there is even a movement to "register" the sorcerers, with a bit of a timely political echo to what's happening in the U.S. right now.
Aria's sin-eating was a new for me. I liked the idea of her easing the transition between life and death for folks, but at times was left with an uneasy understanding of how/why sin eating fit into the overall magic system of the world. Like, if sin eaters are so rare, why does everyone seem so prejudiced against them? And what happens to the majority of folks if they are so rare? (in the book its said sorcerers weighed down by sin become vampires, but there weren't tons of vampires running about) and also apparently they are long-lived but this doesn't seem to impact Aria that much...so I was confused at times.
Once Aria the sin-eater, Harry the possessed PI and Jacob the sorcerer get together to fight an evil murderer that keeps changing names, things got a little easier to both figure out (since we discover some of the differently named bad guys are the same bad guy, and also what exactly is going on with Harry). And the relationships between these three as they figure out what the bad guy is up to certainly was interesting. I think I would liked to have seen more of the evil "vlad" possessing Harry, and also a tad bit more editing in some chapters...i.e. the book tells us one of Harry's possessing ghosts is a former loremaster like three times. I'd read the next one in the series, though, with the hopes that it would be like the second half of this book.