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Poison Sleep (Marla Mason, Book 2) by T.A. Pratt
Book Summary InformationAuthor: T.A. Pratt Edition: Mass Market Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2008-03-25 ISBN: 0553589997 Number of pages: 336 Publisher: Spectra Product features: - ISBN13: 9780553589993
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Poison Sleep (Marla Mason, Book 2)Book Review: A fun, snarky hero in a vividly-imagined world Summary: 5 Stars
POISON SLEEP is the second book in the Marla Mason series of urban fantasy novels. Marla is a sorceress, the tough, cynical and dedicated defender of the fictional East Coast city of Felport. Marla describes her role as half crime boss and half superhero; it's her job to protect the city from supernatural threats while keeping order among the city's magical community. Sorcerers, as a rule, tend to be self-absorbed, egotistical, power-hungry, borderline sociopaths, so Marla has her hands full making sure that their feuds and personality conflicts don't break out into open war.
Marla isn't much for diplomacy, so she sets out to recruit a man named Joshua to assist her. Joshua is a lovetalker, a person whose supernatural charisma makes him instantly liked by everyone around him. Marla hopes that Joshua's talent will help to smooth the ruffled feathers of the other sorcerers and make it easier for her to do her job. Before she can make her pitch, though, she gets an emergency call from the Blackwing Institute, an insane asylum for the magical community. It seems that one of their patients has escaped: a young psychic whose dreams seem to have the power to reshape reality. It's up to Marla to find the girl before she unleashes chaos on the city, all while fending off an assassination plot and a dark man with his own plans for the girl.
This book is a great ride, and it succeeds on a number of levels. Unlike many urban fantasy novels, Pratt uses multiple viewpoint characters, showing us what both Marla and her antagonists are up to. Pratt uses this flexibility to weave a complex plot with plenty of twists and turns, alliances and betrayals. Things are rarely what they appear to be at first glance, and the relationships between the characters shift dramatically as they learn more about each other's goals and motivations. Marla herself is a great protagonist: she's tough, prickly and stubborn, and she can be downright vicious when she has to be, but she's driven by an honest and earnest desire to protect her city and its people. Marla shows a little more of her emotions here than she did in the first book, BLOOD ENGINES, and it makes her a more rounded character. You may disagree with her methods, but you never stop cheering for her.
The book is well-written and a fast, clear read; I finished it in less than a week, and there were several nights when I couldn't bear to put it down. Pratt is a wonderfully visual author, and he paints a beautiful picture of Felport in all its grimy, rust-spattered glory. The young psychic's dreamscapes are equally vivid, and Pratt does a good job of bringing out the beauty, horror, and outright weirdness as her visions intrude into reality.
All in all, I recommend POISON SLEEP to anyone who's a fan of the urban fantasy genre. You don't need to have read BLOOD ENGINES in order to follow this book, but it's a good read in its own right and well worth picking up. Book three in the series, DEAD REIGN, comes out in October 2008, and I'll definitely be picking it up.
Summary of Poison Sleep (Marla Mason, Book 2)The bad girl of the magical underworld is back and badder than ever
Someone wants Marla Mason dead. Usually that?s not news. As chief sorcerer of Felport, someone always wants her dead. But this time she?s the target of a renegade assassin who specializes in killing his victims over days, months, or even years. Not to mention a mysterious knife-wielding killer in black who pops up in the most unexpected places. To make matters worse, an inmate has broken out of the Blackwing Institute for criminally insane sorcerers?a troubled psychic who can literally reweave the fabric of reality to match her own traumatic past.
With her wisecracking partner Rondeau reluctantly in tow, Marla teams up with a ?love-talker? whose dangerous erotic spells not even she can resist. Together they?re searching the rapidly transforming streets of Felport for a woman who?s become the Typhoid Mary of nightmares, infecting everything?and everyone?she touches with a chaos worse than death itself.
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