Review: Ms. Cane is a harsh task-mistress
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 6, 2014
Bloody hell. Give the poor girl a break. Laken Cane drives her main character, Rune Alexander, hard. And can she write! All of that exquisitely described pain and anguish. Holy horror of a cow! What a life our heroine leads.Rune Alexander fills me with compassion. I want to crawl into "Strange Trouble" and somehow comfort her, to let her know that she is OK as she is. My own ghost pain is awakened, and I want to tell her that things will get better. But I would be lying by saying that because Ms. Cane is a cruel mistress for the Shiv Crew.The "Rune Alexander" series is a bleak and dark series. There aren't a great deal of happy moments. Well, there are plenty of happy moments, but that is what they are. Moments. Then Rune and the gang is ripped back into the terror and ache of having to be the "good guys" in spite of all of the persecution and loss. Yet Ms. Cane's writing makes it all endurable.The vampires, zombies and werewolves of the "Rune Alexander" series are not the fluffy ones that we sometimes see in literature today. These are the good, old-fashioned kind. The ones that were told stories about around the fires while night turned into darkest dark and became all the more frightening because we could no see the world.As usual, I have a couple of favorite moments. Rune's gift to Ellie - perfect. That put a huge smile on my face. Rune advising Raze about relationships - pot/kettle much? The two episodes with the obsidian sword. Shad and Fie at the hospital - incredibly cute. The monster's comment: What will you do? ... Hurt me? And finally Ms. Cane's description of Damascus - whew that lady needs to work on her charm.Laken Cane has kept the promise of "Shiv Crew". Her writing has been riveting, tense and tight through all three novels.[...]