CET Writes

Jeyn Roberts’ sequel to  Dark Inside ,  Rage Within  provides vignettes of major protagonists just before massive earthquakes and a mass-murder apocalypse transform the world. Picking up six weeks later, presumably after the events of the first book, it follows the exploits of a band of survivors who have found each other in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Baggers, a subset of humans who have spontaneously become ruthlessly homicidal and well-organized, are hunting survivors down, and taking some to a holding area downtown. Group leader Aries manages her band through the losses and instability of a changed world until the two enigmatic men she has befriended both vanish, prompting her to lead the rag-tag collection of young adults in a raid on the Baggers’ compound. Roberts uses a shifting perspective with each chapter, bouncing back and forth between the main characters’ points of view, with each having several chapters bearing their name, except one. By noting which...

After having graduated from high school early, the trifecta—angels-in-training Haven Terra, her boyfriend Lance, and her best friend Dante—head to New Orleans for community service. In "The Big Easy," the three friends find themselves not only at odds with a local enclave of vicious, shape-shifting demons called the Krewe but also staring down their second test in the quest to earn their wings. However, they soon discover that their fellow volunteers are also angels-in-training, and together they must quell this  menace  and overcome their personal demons, individually and collectively.  In book two of the  Gilded Wings series, Agresti continues her exciting tale of a modern struggle between the forces of good and evil - employing angels and demons, the original supernatural characters. Moreover, without being heavy handed, the author spins a ripping yarn that incorporates motifs and archetypes such as the triumvirate, the plucky heroine, and the Byronic devi...

Image from goodreads.com Tantalize: Kieren’s Story is the graphic novel adaptation of Smith’s young adult noire fantasy by the same name—told from the perspective of Kieren, a mixed-blood werewolf.  Kieren’s senior year of high school finds him awakening to the realization that he is in love with his best friend Quincie who clearly returns his affection.  Unfortunately, he is reluctant to act upon these feelings because to-date he is unable to control the beast within and thus fears harming her.  Moreover, any day now, he will leave to join an urban pack and learn the ways of his kind.  When the murder of the chef at Quincie’s ancestral vampire-themed restaurant appears to have been committed by a werewolf, Kieren is compelled to clear his name and save his best friend from all that threatens her—including herself.  Doyle’s illustrations extend the text by expressing what Kieren can’t, or won’t, in the halting tight-lipped narration that is so representati...

Image from  neilgaiman.com In Murder Mysteries , a murderer is granted an unsolicited gift, forgiveness. During a layover in Los Angeles, he visits and kills a former love interest. Upon returning to his living accommodations, the murderer meets a stranger named Raguel who—in exchange for a cigarette—recounts the tale of the first murder, a crime of passion between angels in heaven. This murder necessitated that Raguel—then an angel—be activated as the vengeance of the Lord. Upon solving the crime, he realizes that God engineered the entire debacle in order to test Lucifer, Captain of the Host. Concluding that although God is infallible he is not just, Raguel chooses to retain his memory of this incident and blesses the narrator with a patchy memory of his own crime. The realistic but simplified art of Murder Mysteries, particularly in its frame story, lends credibility to the narrative, even when it shifts into a fantastical setting. While not suitable for most sec...