‘Night Shift’ – Lilith Saintcrow (Orbit Books)

It has to be said that Lilith Saintcrow has the coolest name in Urban Fantasy. While others merely write about Urban Fantasy, Lilith’s name is all it takes to suggest that she actually lives it. I get this picture of her living in a sinister looking house by a cemetery and hanging out with werewolves and vampires, one day she decides to write about all their adventures… Enough of that! I haven’t read her ‘Dante Valentine’ series but when I saw that she had a new series starting I thought now would be a good time to give her work a go. It’s not bad either…

Jill Kismet is a Hunter, one of those charged with making sure that the Hellbreed (those living on Earth) keep the peace and don’t step over the line. Those that do cross the line are slapped down pretty quick… and permanently. Jill is new to the game having only just lost her mentor a few months previously, she also carries the mark of a Hellbreed who gave her enhanced physical abilities in return for a little of her time every month (he wants her soul). Life is tough but manageable until the day Jill is called out to the scene of a particularly brutal cop-killing. A rogue were-wolf was involved but it looks like a Hellbreed was in on it as well, two species that just don’t mix. Jill needs to get to the bottom of this case before the body count mounts even higher but this is a situation that will push her to her physical limits as well as endanger her very soul…

‘Night Shift’ is the opening shot in the ‘Jill Kismet’ series and (as such) a lot of time is devoted to introducing the main players, setting the scene and so on. I like what she is setting up; it’s very atmospheric (in a noir kind of way) and dark. Just the right kind of vibe for the story being told. The good news is that Saintcrow makes sure that her scene setting doesn’t get in the way of telling a fast paced and gritty tale. Life can be brutally short in the big city when the Hellbreed are after your soul and Jill constantly seeks to redress the balance through gratuitous use of the small arsenal of weaponry that she carries. This leads to some very exciting moments of all out combat between Jill and Hellbreed that just seem to get bigger and more deadly. The outcome is never in doubt (otherwise it would be a really short series!) but there’s enough uncertainty in these passages to keep you guessing.
As the main character, there’s a lot of time spent in Jill’s head and we get a really in depth look at what makes her tick. While you may have seen a lot of this kind of information in other characters, from completely different books, Jill springs off the page as a character in her own right with her own hopes and fears. You can tell that a lot of stuff is being laid in place for future episodes but enough of it is relevant to the plot at hand to be worth sticking with.

One thing that did bug me about ‘Night Shift’ was the sense that I got of too much homage being paid to the ‘Blade’ films (although maybe that’s just me). Half breed human fighting evil? Check. Cool looking black leather coat that makes just the right flapping noise at just the right moment? Check. Mentor that dies and leaves the apprentice on their own (not a spoiler by the way)? Check. While the story was entertaining enough to keep me interested there were points where I thought I may as well watch ‘Blade’ instead of read an imitation. I also wasn’t too sure about Jill’s ability to go ‘between’ to find out information. It wasn’t so much the power itself as the fact that she used it at just the right time to find out just what she needed to know, it felt like the author had hit a brick wall in the plot and needed something to smash her way through…

Quibbles aside though, ‘Night Shift’ remains an entertaining read that should please fans, of Lilith Saintcrow, as well as provide a great place to jump on for people who haven’t read her work yet. I’ll definitely be around for the next in the series at least.

Seven and a Half out of Ten.