Ratings: V4; S2-3; H4
Publisher and Titles: Kensington
Under Wraps (3/2011)
Under Attack (11/2011)
Under Suspicion (5/2012)
This post was revised and updated on 3/6/13 to include a review of the fourth book in the series, Under the Gun. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and reviews of the first three books:
BOOK 4: Under the Gun
In the opening scene, Sophie opens her apartment door to find werewolf Pete Sampson, her presumed-dead former boss, standing in the hallway. At first, Sampson doesn't give Sophie much of an explanation about where he's been, but he does ask her to help him hide out in San Francisco for a brief time. Sophie has always had a soft spot for Sampson, so she agrees to come to his aid. Meanwhile, as soon as Sampson arrives back in town, a series of mutilation murders begins, and Sophie and Alex visit one bloody crime scene after another as they try to decide if the killer is a human or a demon—specifically, a werewolf. The plot unwinds slowly as Sophie and Alex gather clues, argue about various topics (both personal and professional), and try to track down the villain.
There are so many holes in this plot that it's hard to know where to begin. First, Sampson tells Alex right from he beginning that Alex has been helping him since he disappeared. He tells Sophie, "I needed to know when it would be safe to come back again. And the only way I could do that...was to have eyes out here." (p. 6) So...Alex has known all along that Sampson was alive and has been in contact with him, but he has lied to Sophie about it. Sophie is furious about Alex's deceit in the scene in which she learns the truth from Sampson, but she never mentions it to Alex—not once—even when (much later in the story) Alex rages at Sophie because she didn't let him know that Sampson was back. This is the first major plot pothole. Then, moments after Sampson confesses Alex's involvement, he demands that Sophie keep his return a secret form everyone—even from Alex. Why wouldn't he want Alex to know that he's back when he's apparently been keeping in touch with Alex on a regular basis. Why doesn't he go to Alex for help instead of the ineffectual Sopie? That's the second major flaw in the plot set-up.
A secondary story thread has Will (Sophie's human Guardian) leaving town to visit his mother in England—presumably because there's no room for him in this plot. A silly story line involves the fact that the weather in San Francisco turns very sunny, forcing Sophie's vampire roommates, Nina and Vlad, to hole up in the apartment for days. As a result, Nina gets bored and addicts herself to the TV, ordering mountains of schlocky consumer goods from the home shopping networks. Apparently this is meant to be extremely funny, but it's just an annoying interruption in the already thin plot. In one implausible scene, Sophie whips open the blackout curtains in the living room to enjoy the morning sunshine and then is completely surprised when Nina accuses her of trying to kill her. Sophie has been living with Nina and dealing with vampires for years, so why doesn't she know that sunlight can burn vampires to ash? Why on earth do they have blackout curtains on all the windows if not to protect Nina and Vlad from the sun? It's a big "Duh!" moment.
In one odd scene, Sampson sends Sophie and Alex on a clue-hunting trip to visit Mort, a half-human/half-demon who immediately recognizes Sophie and then tries to kill her for absolutely unknown reasons. Mort shows up in just that one scene and we never hear any more about him. My guess is that he'll play some part in another book, but this is certainly an awkward way to introduce him into Sophie's life—whoever he is.
I'm still not entirely clear about the mythology surrounding Sophie's position as the Vessel for human souls. Nothing Vessel-related ever seems to happen to her, at least not in this book. At one point, she describes herself as a gateway for souls, but if so, where are all of the souls that are supposed to be going through her gate?
All in all, this is a deeply flawed book in a series that is getting steadily weaker, both in its improbable, glitched-up plots and its shallow, one-dimensional characters. Although Sophie does pull herself together in the requisite showdown scene at the end, she is her usual useless self through most of the book. Here's how she describes herself: "In my life, I did a lot of crying. And sniveling. And falling down. For a girl whose CONTACTS list was loaded with the undead, the overpowering, and the often stinky, I didn't have a heck of a whole lot going for myself other than my near infallible ability to screw things up." (p. 12) For some heroines, this statement could be written off as just poor self-image, but in Sophie's case, everything she says is quite true, and these are definitely not the traits I'm looking for in a heroine. Why Sampson would even come to Sophie, rather than Alex, for help in the first place is a mystery to me.
WORLD-BUILDING
In this world, the supernaturals are a motley group that includes the usual vampires and werewolves as well as all of the lesser groups: gremlins, trolls, gargoyles, fairies, witches, dragons, minotaurs, banshees, zombies, pixies, hobgoblins...and many more. In this series, these supernaturals are all called demons. All of them masquerade in their human forms in the mortal world, but when they visit the Underworld Detection Agency (UDA), they revert to their natural forms. To maintain order, the San Francisco UDA keeps a registry of all supernaturals in the Bay area and solves all of the paranormal crimes.
The series heroine is Sophie Lawson, and as the series begins, she is the executive assistant (not a secretary, she points out again and again) to the head of the UDA, Pete Sampson, a handsome and sexy werewolf who is an object of Sophie's lust. Sophie is the only human employee of the UDA, and she's really not a normal human because she is immune to magic. She can't be influenced by magic, and magic can't be used to hide anything from her.
Here is Sophie's description of herself: "I'm a plain, one hundred percent first-life, air breathing, magic-free human being. I don't have fangs, wings, or hooves. I'm five-foot-two on a good day, topped with a ridiculous mess of curly red hair on a bad day, and my eyes are the exact hue of lime Jell-O. My super powers are that I can consume a whole pizza in twelve minutes flat and sing the fifty states in alphabetical order. And that I'm alive. Which makes me a weird, freakish anomaly in an Underworld office that keeps blood in the office fridge and offers life insurance that you can collect should you get the opportunity to come back to life." (Under Attack, p. 3) Sophie's way of dealing with stress is to eat a stack of chocolate marshmallow pinwheels, washed down by a mug of chardonnay.
BOOK 1: Under Wraps
Supporting characters include Nina LaShay, Sophie's vampire roommate, and Nina's nephew Louis, who calls himself "Vlad" and belongs to a vampire group (the Vampire Empowerment Movement, aka VERM) that wants to go back to the old ways. Steve the Troll, who wants to be Sophie's boyfriend but acts like a stalker, adds some humor.
BOOK 2: Under Attack
As book 2 opens, Sophie thinks back on the events of book one: "While I had gone for more than thirty-three years with nothing so much as an overdue library book to raise my eyebrows, in the last twelve months I had become involved in a gory murder investigation, been kidnapped, attacked, hung by my ankles as someone attempted to bleed me dry...And I had fallen in love with a fallen angel who had the annoying habit of dropping into my life with a pizza and a six-pack when things were supernaturally awful, and dropping out when things shifted into relatively normal gear." (p. 5)
In this book, Sophie has a reunion with her long-dead grandmother and learns some shocking information about her family history. She also picks up a Guardian named Will Sherman, who is just as hot as Alex—and he has the advantage of being entirely human. As usual, Sophie is in jeopardy during most of the story, getting bruised, banged up, and bloody over and over again. Not surprisingly, she also spends a great deal of time dissolving in tears. Although Sophie manages to win a crucial battle, she is definitely not an urban fantasy heroine, contrary (once again) to the cover art. This book, with its many fashion references, girlie moments, and too-soft heroine, continues to keep the series firmly in the chick-lit camp.
The primary problem with the plot of Under Attack is that it makes no sense for Alex to ask for Sophie's help because all that does is lead Ophelia to Sophie. After that happens, Alex pretty much leaves Sophie open to Ophelia's horrific mental, physical, and emotional attacks without providing any protection for her at all. This guy is a veteran fallen angel facing off with another of his kind. Shouldn't he have been able to predict exactly what Ophelia would do to Sophie? Shouldn't he have made sure Sophie wasn't wandering around San Francisco all by herself? Alex comes across as a big wimp with his own suspicious motives, and the Guardian sure doesn't do much guarding. To me, it's not very entertaining when the heroine bears the brunt of the violence while the big guys just offer her a cup of tea (p. 251), argue among themselves about who's watching over her the best (p. 271), keep saying things like "Be safe" (p 117), and then leave her all by herself to cope with whatever violence comes next. Alex's main response to Sophie's many beatings is to keep telling her that everything will be be "okay." (pp. 116, 126, 128, 261, 289, and more) The whole thing just didn't work for me.
Here is Sophie taking a look at the injuries resulting from her first beating by Ophelia: "...bald spot [from hair pulling] slightly visible, black marks already starting to blossom under each eye, blood caking and starting to dry at the corner of my mouth. I checked my neck and groaned at the constellation of tiny bloody pricks there [from strangulation attempt]." (p. 98) Moments later, Alex comes running in, takes one look at Sophie, and exclaims, "Are you okay? Did she hurt you at all?" (p. 100) Duh! Is this guy blind?
BOOK 3: Under Suspicion
When Sophie's difficult dragon client, Mrs. Henderson, fails to keep her appointment at the UDA, Sophie goes to her home and finds a blood-spattered crime scene, but no bodies. Soon there are more crimes involving Sophie's clients. A banshee is mugged; a centaur is beaten and drowned; and Sophie herself falls victim to an attempted staking. Sophie, being the over-caffeinated, hysterical woman that she is, runs around like Chicken Little trying to get people to realize that someone is targeting demons for extermination. No one pays any attention at all to her cries of alarm—not Nina—her vampire roommate, not her boss, and not even her Will—her Guardian. They all think of excuses for the crimes and go on their merry ways.
Once again, the cover art belies the content of the story. This is not urban fantasy, folks, it's 100% chick lit (CH). And in this book, it's not even very good chick lit. The plot is not so much insubstantial as it is idiotic. For example, early on Sophie finds a clue that implicates Nina and/or Vlad, but never mentions it to anyone. In fact, after she finds the clue, she doesn't even include it in her never-ending interior monologues. She just finds it, looks at it, wonders about it for a moment, and then never thinks about it again until the end of the book (after the resolution) when she asks Nina about it. Totally illogical and just plain silly. At one time or another, Sophie suspects just about everyone she knows of being the perpetrator of the anti-demon crimes—everyone, that is, except the actual villain.
The series has always been lightweight, but this book takes it beyond kooky to idiotic and preposterous. Sophie has become a caricature of a chick lit heroine. She scarfs down endless marshmallow cookies (covering herself and her immediate surroundings in layers of crumbs); she is constantly either bursting into tears or retching in a gutter; and she has one TSTL moment after another in which she acts without a plan, or even a cautionary thought as to the consequences.
Here are some more absurdities: Sophie has been living with her vampire roommate for years, but every single time Nina makes a quick move (and that happens frequently), Sophie literally shakes with fear because she is terrified that Nina will attack her. They are supposed to be BFFs, and Nina has never hurt Sophie, so why all the drama? Here's another illogical moment: Will accompanies Sophie to a shop in Chinatown to track down some silver bullets, but he's absolutely terrified to enter Chinatown because he's afraid he'll encounter a Mogwai, which is the mythical creature that stars in the Gremlins movies. Will is a big, strong, well-armed Guardian, but he's terrified of a fictional movie creature? Is this supposed to be funny? Not! Make your own decision about reading this book, but don't expect much in the way or either humor or logic.
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