Title: Dark Time (Mortal Path, bk. 1)
Author: Dakota Banks
Genre: Urban/paranormal fantasy
Length: 309 pages
Plot Basics: Susannah is put on trial in the 1600s for being a witch. In order to escape her punishment, she makes a bargain with the demon Rabishu to serve as his assassin and live forever. But when she finds out about an escape clause, Susannah is willing to take it to redeem her life and atone for her lifetime of killing -- even though it will make her mortal.
Banter Points: Word Nerd really liked the premise here of a woman with kick-butt powers trading them in because she's not OK with killing people. Too many times, characters like that have no remorse about their actions. It's also a cool set-up that the consequences to her good actions is that she is catching up on her aging... saving lives could cost her hers in the end.
Bummer Points: Word Nerd is an urban fantasy fan, but had some serious problems with the book. It wasn't the urban fantasy part she didn't believe (She was an assassin for a demon? No problem!), it was how the protagonist moved through our real world. She's supposedly super rich and able to live off the grid, but when she does some things (like charter planes repeatedly) the grid would pay attention to that. Additionally, the action tended to cut away from the scenes that were the most interesting (like getting rescued from a plane crash...). The cut aways drug the action level way down and made Word Nerd feel like her copy of the book was missing chapters.
Word Nerd Recommendation: The cool premise can't redeem the rest of the problems for Word Nerd. Lots of other people though have given the book great blurbs, so maybe Word Nerd's not the best judge of this one.
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