Salt and Silver by Anna Katherine is way out of my usual reading comfort zone. On the other hand, it’s got a quirky, complex heroine named Allie; a laconic and swashbuckling (in 21st-century leather-duster terms, at least) hero named Ryan; and an Inanna-esque storyline of a woman’s descent into a multi-leveled underworld. Add in a rainy afternoon and a big bowl of popcorn, and who could ask for more?
I don’t often read urban fantasy. Am I the only person in America not intrigued by vampires, angels and demons? Apparently so. But in Salt and Silver Anna Katherine makes the most of it, placing precise and gritty details of contemporary New York side-by-side with blood, monsters and magic as if it’s the most natural combination in the world.
What I liked best was the mythology, the bits of folklore about demons and vampires (Salt and Silver has some very unusual vampires), werewolves and hollow-tree women, door-hounds and lamia; I also loved the details from the magics and underworlds of different cultures and societies throughout history. I am an absolute sucker for that sort of thing. It’s hard to tell what’s real (well, not real, but you know what I mean) and what the author made up, as my mother would say, out of the whole cloth. It’s seamless.
The cover blurb calls it a “fun and sexy romp,” but I’m not sure I’d characterize it quite that lightly. There’s humor, yes, and there’s sex, but romping? Not so much. Allie goes to hell and back and never loses her love for Ryan or her penchant for wisecracks, and in the end the world ends. Or as she says: “Some world, anyway.”
The Second Duchess
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