Review: Awesome start to a new paranormal series
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2014
I have loved Ms Mallory's  previous series but didn't realize she had started a new one. When this book came up as a free selection on Amazon, I was interested to check it out. Boy, am I glad I did! To think that this has been out a year, almost long enough for the next book to be out, and I hadn't enjoyed it yet!  This book is well written, well edited, with wonderful characters and a story that had me laughing out loud and on the edge of my seat. I didn't want the story to end and I can't wait for the next one.Set in the present, the story features Lily Harper, a young bank executive who dies in a car accident on icy roads on the way to work in Colorado.  Lily ends up in the offices of AfterLife, Inc., whose manager apologizes for her premature death. It seems that her guardian angel was MIA at the time of her accident and she died before her time. She's given the option of joining the waiting list for the Kingdom, spending the next 100 years in Limbo, or joining up as a soul retriever and joining the living again. When she's retrieved 10 souls who were delivered to the wrong places by a Y2K bug in AfterLife,Inc's system, then she will go on to the Kingdom. Some of the souls are undeserving who ended up in the Kingdom, some are earthbound who should have gone on and some are deserving souls who should have ended up in the Kingdom, but instead have gone to the Underground City. She's given great benefits-an amazing apartment, relocation to Edinburgh, a sexy new body, unlimited credit card and debit cards, a company car with an infailable GPS, but no training except a copy of Dante's Inferno. Oh, she also has a guide, her guardian angel, Bill.In contrast to Lily, who spent her life trying to improve herself and gain self esteem, Bill is the most profane, unholy, unrepentant and cocky person/angel Lily has ever met. When she first meets him she thinks a reject from "Animal House" is playing a joke on her. He's only 5 1/2 feet tall, has a beer belly and looks like he hasn't bathed in a month. She hasn't even had time to find seasonally appropriate clothing when he tells her they have to be off to get her a sword. Sword?!  As they venture to the location given to them, Bill tells her he's read the first two chapters of the Cliff's Notes on Dante's Inferno, so he's sure he can help. How reassuring! The Bladesmith turns out to be an ancient Celtic Druid who lives in the Dark Woods (might want to brush up on your Inferno). His name is Tallis Black and he exacts an exorbitant price for allowing them to stay and for making a blade. He's huge, powerful and intimidating, with many secrets, but he knows what he's doing, so Lily has to pay up. Tallis almost comes unglued, though, when he finds out Lily is a virgin, because innocence cannot go into the Underground City and Lily just got her first soul retrieval to do there. Resigned to protect her, and unwilling to send her without any training or guide, Tallis agrees to accompany Lily and Bill on their mission.As a fun aside, you can " friend" each character on Facebook, and Bill posts some hilarious stuff. I love to picture characters in my own mind's eye, but I like the author's models very well. This book is a great read, no sex, but plenty of off key humor, and some demon fighting violence.Heat factor mild.