Lucy A. Snyder, Spellbent (Del Rey, 2009)
Apprentice witch Jessie Shimmer has problems: her boyfriend Cooper keeps waking her up with his nightmares, her new familiar isn't talking to her, and the rent is due. Then Cooper disappears after accidentally opening up an intradimensional portal, leaving Jessie on her own to hunt down the fire-breathing demon that's running amok through Columbus, Ohio.
And all of this happens before things get really bad.
In Lucy A. Snyder's new urban fantasy, Spellbent, apprentice witch Jessie Shimmer is compelled to undergo trial by fire -- both figuratively and literally -- as she attempts to save her lover and the city in which she lives.
Jesse's struggles are complicated further by the fact that ubiquemancy, the particular branch of magic which Jesse and Cooper practice, doesn't get a lot of respect from the rest of the magical community. It does, however, provide the opportunity for Snyder to use her offbeat sense of humor to develop a kind of magic for hackers, as Jesse, broke and on the run from the authorities, has to kludge together spells from whatever odds and ends she can manage to get her hands on. Of course, a world of magic based upon the hacking worldview is no surprise coming from the writer who came up with "Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: The User's Notes").
Lucy A. Snyder is the author of many previously published short stories, some of which were collected in Sparks and Shadows, and were as likely to feature Snyder's dark sense of humor as well as her dark sense of fantasy. Snyder's brand of urban fantasy is therefore a bit darker and grittier than most, with many of the characters battling their own very believable personal demons as well as the supernatural variety. The character of Jessie also makes a nice change from the many heroines of urban fantasy stories in that Jessie actually spends more time worrying about other people than she does her clothes, and she relies on her brains and courage rather than sex to solve problems.
If I have one criticism of the book it is the same criticism I have of a lot of urban fantasy, namely, that much of the beginning is slowed down by a lot of description about the magical world in which the protagonist lives and the dynamics of how her magic works. Once the real action of the story begins, however, Snyder is off and running and the story doesn't slow down until the final page.
First in a planned trilogy, Spellbent will be coming out in paperback and eBook formats on December 29, 2009.
