Any Given Doomsday

I finished this book with mixed feelings....

On the one hand, never having read a work of “urban fantasy,” I wasn't quite sure what to expect. For the most part, I had fun reading this book. It moves quickly, and the premise makes for a perfect pre-Halloween story. Handeland understands that most monster lore is cliched, and plays well with those cliches - Phoenix is always the first to poke fun at the predictability of many of the “realities” surrounding the legendary vampires, shape-shifters, and more. Balancing all of the mystical elements, the story is peppered with pop culture references - an American mythology of sorts.

Having said that, I feel that one of the major plot points made the story very hard to enjoy on the whole, and extremely offensive. Being an “empath,” Phoenix absorbs the powers of those she comes into contact with - sexual contact, that is. She gets some action and she gets some supernatural powers (if her partner has any). Not a problem, right? Wrong. She doesn't even know her power until her spiritual guide drugs her, raping her while she believes she's dreaming - and she really enjoys it. The trope of “woman gets raped and ends up loving it” occurs multiple times in the story, and I was absolutely disgusted. It nearly ruined the reading experience for me, as there were many other ways in which the author could have written her use of this power into the story.