Title Working for the Devil Author Lilith Saintcrow Cover Art Lauren Panepinto Publisher Orbit - 2011 First Printing 2005
	Title Dead Man Rising Author Lilith Saintcrow Cover Art Lauren Panepinto Publisher Orbit - 2011 First Printing 2006
	Title The Devil's Right Hand Author Lilith Saintcrow Cover Art Lauren Panepinto Publisher Orbit - 2011 First Printing 2007
	Title Saint City Sinners Author Lilith Saintcrow Cover Art Lauren Panepinto Publisher Orbit - 2011 First Printing 2007
	Title To Hell and Back Author Lilith Saintcrow Cover Art Lauren Panepinto Publisher Orbit - 2011 First Printing 2008
	Category Urban Fantasy Warnings PTSD, abusive relationships, really stupid protagonists Main Characters Dante Valentine, Japhrimel, Gab, Jace Main Elements Demons, wizards Website lilithsaintcrow.com

Necromancer. Bounty hunter. Killer.

Dante Valentine has been all three in her life. But in the beginning, she was a Necromancer for hire. And while she was choosy about her jobs, there were just some she couldn't turn down. Like when the Devil showed up at the door and offered her a deal. Her life -- in exchange for the capture and elimination of a renegade demon. But how do you kill something that can't die?

Dante Valentine, one of urban fantasy's hottest series, is compiled into one volume for the first time. Included in this omnibus edition are: Working for the Devil, Dead Man Rising, The Devil's Right Hand, Saint City Sinners, and To Hell and Back.

Working for the Devil

Dead Man Rising

The Devil's Right Hand

Saint City Sinners

To Hell and Back

Reading these books is kind of like that set of cover images above. Repetitive and all about Dante. The first book starts off well enough, the world building is interesting, it is an urban fantasy, but one that either takes place in the future or in an alternate world where "psions", people with powers like Shamans (who can contact Loa), Necomances (who are bound to their version of the Death god) and others have become recognized and regulated. They of course scare the regular folk silly. In fact I keep thinking how it is similar to the telepaths in Babylon 5, or even the kinds of issues that come up in XMen. Not that the ideas are stolen, but just that we will always want to control those who are different.

But then one of the characters dies in the first book and Dante doesn't take it well. The second book is 80% angst, 10% PTSD and 10% plot. It got so annoying. She would repeat things in her head over and over and over again. I get it, people with PTSD probably do exactly that, but...as a reader (or at least one who hasn't had PTSD) it gets annoying fast. One job of an author is to provide information to the reader, and perhaps at times remind them of things, like a line in a prophecy read perhaps ten chapters ago in case the reader forgot. But when the author repeats the same thing every second page (or even more than once in the same page) the reader eventually goes "I KNOW NOW GET ON WITH IT!!!!!!" Unless you are writing for someone with short term memory issues, you don't need to repeat the same five things every few pages. Instead of coming off as a strong heroine, Dante came off worse than the worst whiney, angsty, teenage SFF character who is in love with some hot boy but she's not "good enough" for him...only these books are not YA, they just take that trope to the extreme.

Along with repeating her thoughts and issues over and over again, there are other things that repeat constantly, like how the emerald embedded in her cheek (a sign of being an accredited Necromance) will constantly "spat" sparks. Or her rings will "spat". Or her sword will "spat" blue fire. She seems to "spat" all the time, like a party sparkler twenty-four-seven. There are other words in the dictionary.

And by the third book, you have the super annoying "My life is at stake but no one will tell me anything" trope. This annoyed the heck out of my in the Chronicles of Elantra too, but the rest of that series I enjoyed so forgave it. But here, since I was already annoyed, it was extra annoying here. She's been transformed into a hedaira, and yes, exactly, what is that? I dunno, and you'd think someone would tell her seeing as it has significant ramifications for her. But nope, everything is secret secret till of COURSE she stops trusting everyone around her. And she had trust issues to start with. At the same time, in one paragraph she'll be yelling a Japhrimel that he never tells her anything, and in the next paragraph he'll open his mouth and she'll stop him saying she's too tired to deal with the information now. Well, yeah, I mean if you yelled at me for telling you nothing, and then told me to shut up two seconds later, I'd probably give up explaining things to you too.

And given there are plenty of real enemies to vent her anger on, she takes it out generally on her friends and lovers. She realizes she's a...well I don't want to write it here, but that realization lasts a whole two seconds and she flips out all over again. The only reason I can see Japhrimel hanging out with her is that being a demon, most humans must be incredibly boring, at least this one is so unstable he can entertain himself trying to guess if she'll blow up in the next five minutes or not, or even succeed in making him angry, which must be interesting for him as well. Eternity is a long time to be bored after all. Her suicidal tendencies and his need to save her ass, pretty well constantly, must help pass the time.

Mind you, he's not without faults either, deciding that his only job is to protect her, he'd be happy to lock her in some inaccessible place no one can get to. But supposedly he loves her too, and that of course is not love. You can't love them if you don't let them live their own lives. She's a warrior and not letting her fight is the equivalent of many an abusive relationship where the girl is not allowed to have her own job, her own friends, etc. So some of her anger is kind of justified. But frankly, she got me so annoyed at her for being stupid, I couldn't help but agree with him a bit, after all his life is bound to hers in some way and she keeps trying to sacrifice herself to save him (when he can be reincarnated and presumably she cannot).

And perhaps we should recall he isn't human but demon and they take lies and manipulation to a whole different level. It might be an interesting twist if he ultimately turns out of have an ulterior motive to binding himself to Dante, one that doesn't involve love...but I doubt it, I think this is one of those YA kind of love stories where the bad boy will change because he loves the good (well, she's not exactly good) girl, you know the destiny written in the stars, etc. At least she does question that part!

I still have two books to go, and I'll get through them because I have a reading challenge to read a book with more 900 pages and this omnibus was the only one that qualified, and I'm a bit obssessive about finishing series I start, but if I were another kind of reader I probably wouldn't finish the series. These books had promise, interesting concepts for setting and characters but needed a serious dose of editing. You could cut out two books worth of pages if the author stopped her for spinning circles in her own mind...but then I guess it wouldn't be enough for my reading challenge anymore!

UPDATE: Finished the last two books, not really an improvement, the last one maybe did get a little better but maybe that's because Dante spends a lot of time unconcious? For what it's worth it wrapped up the lose ends, so I guess that's a bonus?

Now a quote from the back: "She's a brave, charismatic protagonist with a smart mouth and a suicidal streak. What's not to love?" Hmm, pretty much everything. She isn't brave, she spends most of her time either hiding in terror or literally going beserk (that's not bravery but insanity). Attacking people because you are incapable of holding yourself back is not even remotely bravery. Heck, I wouldn't want to be her friend since any time she gets edgy her only response is to pull out her sword and start killing people and half the time she'll go after the only people that actually care about her. Charismatic? She's a feaking psychopath! There was not a thing appealing about her! Smart mouth? Well smart aleck yes, she goes around insulting absolutely EVERYONE, especially her friends and allies (then she'll angst about saying stupid things...then two paragraphs later she'll do it again, so NEVER LEARNS! And across five books you'd think there's be *some* growth). Suicidal streak...ok, gotta give the blurb that one, suicidal to the extreme. How she survived for more than a month as a bounty hunter while being this reckless and quick to anger/completely nervous breakdown, I'll never understand.