The risks of doing the make-up for an actor playing the Horned God, when part of the make up skill uses magic. Sequel to Fistful of Sky, which I think was the better book. ( )

Opal is the oldest sibling in a family filled with Talents. Every one (excepting her father) has a magical gift; Opal's is to do with light and illusion. She broke free of her controlling mother and created a new identity for herself, as a movie make-up artist. Unfortunately, years of repressing her true feelings and abilities leave her vulnerable to the powerful forces haunting her latest movie set.

This book should have been fascinating and creepy--instead it was frustrating and boring. Opal notices immediately that the leading man is being possessed and that the set itself has some sort of magic thrumming through it, but does nothing about it for fear of getting a bad reputation in the movie business. One by one, everybody else figures out that something is horribly wrong--the leading man literally stabs someone ON FILM and drinks their blood--and each of them say, "eh, let's just see what happens next." The leading man himself is aware that through the set, he's being possessed by an unknown deity who wants to drink people's life force, but decides to stay because abandoning the project would be bad for his career. Um, wouldn't charges based upon the physical and sexual assault be worse? The deity eventually makes everyone on set have an orgy, again ON FILM, and everyone wakes up, figures out what happened, and then goes back to work. WHAT? No one freaks about, no one goes to the cops, no one even demands answers. There is no emotional tension at all, even after events that should cause serious consequences--like, say, getting stabbed, or getting possessed, or getting raped.

And then, randomly, the book ends. No resolution at all. Just--no more writing on the pages. Very weird, and very unsatisfying. ( )

Nina's book are always different than others. Its been a long time since I've read one. Cool that she's a 'local' writer, from Eugene. The book is set in Oregon. Kind of think its towards Redmond, but not there. Opal and her family sound cool. I could see other books with either Opal or her siblings. Will have to wait and see. Would like to read more about Corvus too. The ending was a bit odd though, it just ended. Nothing really resolved, just done. There's a god in a director's body now too. ( )

Nina Kiriki Hoffman has definitely written better books. Its not awful, it was a light, enjoyable read with a little magic and a little fun, and if I didn't know how much more she is capable of I would probably have liked it more. I think I know where she was going with this but it didn't quite get there.

Her characters are often outsiders in some way, by chance or by choice; street people, artists, runaways, backwoods tribes, musicians. Because of their outsider status they aren't that upset by strangeness, even quite considerable strangeness. Confronted with the supernatural her characters often respond with a sort of matter of fact, "okay now this is happening," acceptance. That rings very true to me, I've known people like that, and at the same time their pragmatism somehow makes the magic seem more magical.

So this book, set as it is on a film set, should work within the NKH world. Film people are certainly outsiders and are certainly accepting of all kinds of strange. But perhaps because she just doesn't know this world as well, or because there is some part of it that doesn't resonate with her "voice" the film crew never quite comes to believable life. There are flashes here and there, but only flashes.
( )

Ok, this is weird, sexy, fantasy erotica. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but damn is it sexy. And like everything she writes, very very imaginative. ( )