reverancepavane | is there anything evil in the system (Reply)

It wasn't that long ago that Aisling Gray was a simple mundane who stumbled into the magical underworld (in a societal rather than physical sense), and discovered that she was an naturally powerful (but completely untrained) Guardian (the order of magicians responsible for protecting the world from the Forces of Abaddon), the preferred mate of the leader of the Green Dragon sept (and an actual fire-breathing dragon), and due to accidentally summoning the only unattached demon in ~~Hell~~ Abaddon, a defacto Demon Lord. [Admittedly her only demonic servitor takes the form of a wise-cracking Newfoundland dog called Jim (short for Efrajim) who is amazingly deficient in the demonic powers department.] But despite all this she managed to solve the murder of the most-powerful wizard in Europe.

Things couldn't get any worse, could they?

Well, in a word, "yes".

Lets see, the other Guardians are naturally miffed that she has so much innate power, the leaders of the other Dragon septs either want to have her for themselves, use her for their own purposes, or kill her because they are jealous, her lover has the arrogance you would expect of a great scaly fire-breathing lizard brought up in the Rennaisance, and the Demon Princes of Abaddon have noticed that there is a new-comer in their rather select circle.

"You know," Jim said, following us up the curved staircase. Nora and Rene, both with faces filled with questions, trailed behind us. "My life used to be boring. A damnation here, a curse there, with an occasional blight or two to break routine. Now I have Aisling."

I glared over my shoulder at the demon. It grinned back. "She's better than reality TV, Internet porn sites, and the trashoids all put together."

Fire Me Up and Light My Fire are book 2 and 3 of the Aisling Gray series by Katie MacAlister. They continue almost directly on from You Slay Me. Aisling realises that she needs to find a mentor to help her develop her Guardian abilities. Unfortuneately, where she doesn't encounter prejudice for being innately powerful, her role as Wyvern's Mate of the Green Dragons and a Demon Lord are sufficient to make most of the Guardians turn their back on her. Oh yeah, and as an obvious Demon Lord, she is the first to be suspected when Guardians start turning up dead at the magical convention she is attending. And meanwhile she has is thrown into the deep end of dragon politics. And has lots of incendiary sex (literally) with her dragon lover.

I'm really enjoying this series. It reminds me heavily of Tanya Huff's excellent Summon The Keeper series, and the the resemblance only increases as the influence of the Dark Powers increases in the series (the Keeper series is set in a hotel in Canada whose central heating is provided courtesy of a portal to Hell).

The end of the third book marks a fundamental change in Aisling and I have to say that I particularly enjoy how this change is expressed, and am looking forward to its continuing manifestation in the next book.