I hated this book.  For terrible writing, complete lack of plot and about as much character development as the average installment of Penthouse Forum, I give Laurell K. Hamilton's latest novel Blood Noir an "F."  I'd give it a lower grade if I could.  I'm operating off of more, here, than residual feelings of betrayal.  For a long time, Laurell K. Hamilton was one of my favorite authors.  She gave us a strong female protagonist who had interesting adventures.  Although vulnerable, she was never a slave to her emotions.  Part fantasy, part thriller, part murder mystery, these books were something different.  It discouraged me, when Hamilton started writing soft-core porn.  For awhile, she at least maintained some degree of integrity; her characters had adventures in between bouts of kinky sex.  Eventually, though, those adventures grew less and less frequent, until they finally disappeared.  I thought her last installment, The Harlequin, was bad--Hamilton wasted about 400 pages to describe Anita Blake and her boyfriends going to a Cirque du Soleil type of event.  Well, heck, in comparison, that was the best book ever.

When I was in grammar school I was already an inveterate reader of Terry Brooks.  I remember running around my neighborhood with a staff and a brown cloak my grandmother had made for me, pretending to be a Druid of the Four Lands.  Often I would press my little brother and one or two of my friends into service, equip them with homemade fantasy regalia, and then begin the inevitable discussion of who was to be Allanon, who Bremen, who the ancient Galaphile.* 

The Shannara books were the first post-Tolkien fantasy novels I read, and I enjoyed them perhaps a bit too much at that age.  Later on, I even slogged through the Magic Kingdom of Landover Series.  After finishing The Talismans of Shannara, which effectively ended Mr. Brooks's work in the world of Shannara for quite a few years to come, I moved on.  I saw The Word and the Void series as it hit the shelves, but at that point I was too wrapped up in other reading to be interested in a non-Shannara Terry Brooks book, and the idea of fantasy set in the real world never held much fascination for me.

Aside from the a brief dalliance with The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara when that trilogy came out, I didn't read another Terry Brooks novel for a long time after that.  Then recently, after seeing CJ read and enjoy Word and Void, I decided that it was finally time to complete my reading of Terry Brooks.  I found that The Word and the Void trilogy, comprised of the novels Running with the Demon, A Knight of the Word, and Angel Fire East, is a heartfelt, if not revolutionary, work of early urban fantasy.

Conceptually, there’s nothing new about having supernatural entities like vampires, zombies, werewolves, and whatnot existing alongside humans and having their own hotspots in nightclubs and bars. Just read one of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels for that idea, but Mark Henry does take it a step further with the aforementioned magazines, their own newspapers, a reality TV show—Undead on Tape—a spa, and even a 12-step group!

Parts of this book were like watching my cat suck his toes: morbidly fascinating, but not very interesting.  Until the last 50 pages or so, I had difficulty putting it down—even as I wished it were better.  Before I get into the meat of the review, let me point out that The Outlaw Demon Wails was only disappointing in relation to the whole of the series.  Since Kim Harrison debuted the Rachel Morgan series in 2004 with Dead Witch Walking, she’s impressed me as one of the best new writers working today.  Her realistic characters and original plots stand out in a field full of clichés, murky plots and archetypal characters.  However, for the first time, in the sixth installment, KH falters.