The Kim Harrison novella Sideswiped, a work meant to introduce you to the world of Peri Reed, is pretty bad. Both in its technical aspects and in the near-total lack of relevance it has to the first main novel in the series.
Which would be The Drafter. After the terrible showing of the previous story (and preview first chapter) I waffled back and forth quite a bit over whether or not to give this a proper chance… and I should have went with my initial plan of ignoring it. While certainly better than Sideswiped it unfortunately has some major characterization and plot-related problems and isn’t very enjoyable in any respect. One interesting thing about it though is how, rather than an agency thriller, it comes off more like a gender equality allegory.
Switching authors now, Seanan McGuire‘s Once Broken Faith is the tenth October Daye novel and does something a bit refreshing. Rather than further escalate matters it decides to take a step horizontally and introduce a number of the other North American Fae rulers while wrapping up both the aftermath of having found the antidote and (with the help of a bonus short story) the Queen of Mists’ situation. It’s a solid balance of humor, action, drama, and world-building.
