Customer Reviews

Blue Diablo: A Corine Solomon Novel

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

f you haven't read anything by Ann Aguirre yet, what are you waiting for? Blue Diablo is a refreshingly new entry in the urban fantasy genre, featuring a sassy protagonist who is haunted by her past. Corine Solomon is a handler, who can read the history of an object by touch alone. Her ability was given to her by her mother as she died in a fire; consequently, every time Corine uses the ability she experiences extreme pain and burn scars. Formerly Corine used this ability in partnership with her lover Chance to locate missing persons, but when their last case went horribly wrong, Corine fled the country and opened her own antique store in Mexico City. But when Chance's mother goes missing, Corine agrees to use her abilities to help find her, and she finds that chapter of her past hasn't quite closed yet.
I really loved this book, and Corine in particular. She's sassy and a survivor, but she's not the stereotypical kickass hard-bodied heroine you usually find in urban fantasy. She's short, dresses in bohemian chic, and likes to eat; she could be me or one of my girlfriends, except for her ability and the tragedy of her past. To me, she seemed quite real, as did her relationship with Chance; these are people who knew each other deeply in the past, but are uncertain how to relate to one another in the present. There's chemistry there all right, but Corine is uncertain whether she wants to go down that road again.
Another thing I really enjoyed about this book is how real Corine's world felt. Aguirre is herself an ex-pat living in Mexico, which no doubt helped in portraying Corine's life in Mexico City. What really impressed me, however, was how the supernatural details were intricately woven with the details of daily life. It was really easy to believe in the magic that powers Corine's world because there are a lot of people who do believe in it; among the magically skilled are curanderas and practitioners of wicca and voodoo, who are credited with such abilities in the world outside the novel as well. I like urban fantasies with winged fay and gargoyles, but it's also a nice change to read something that doesn't stretch my credibility too far. Highly recommended, for its appealing characters, fast-paced plot, and authentic magical world.

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. I read three-quarters of it and then just threw in the towel. The main character and the slow pace of the story really tried my patience. I felt like the author was dragging out the storyline and had way too many page fillers. Pages upon pages of explanations for Corine's feelings, her surroundings, the carpet, the tile, the curtains, what she's wearing, what her ex is wearing, what she's eating. The main character Corine has a cool gift of the "touch". Instead of actually "touching" things, she spent most of her time reminiscing about her ex-husband. Who, I might add, has come to her for help because his mother, the mother-in-law she loves so much, has been kidnapped. While they go on their road trip back to the scene of the crime, she's not only insensitive to his pain; she's making dates with another man. It took me three days to get through three-quarters of this book; it was that bad for me. Dark Urban Fantasy readers beware; to me this book seemed more like a paranormal romance disguised as UF. The book never seem to get anywhere and the author was way to repetitive. Therefore, I cannot recommend this book to urban fantasy readers but paranormal romance readers may find it intriguing.

"Blue Diablo", is an Urban Fantasy written in the first person and what I liked about the heroine and narrator of the story, "Corine Solomon", is that she is real. Corine doesn't see herself as beautiful; in fact she talks about her imperfections, and dressing "hippie chic". She possesses a dry wit that permeates the narrative of this novel and had me laughing out loud on numerous occasions. Corine isn't a gun toting, martial arts expert; her mother gifted her with a unique, rare ability that while provided her a source of income for a time also causes her heartache and nearly cost her life. She is a "handler", which means she has a psychic or magical (whichever you believe it to be) ability to touch an object and visualize what the owner was doing at the time they last handled it. And, her gift gets her into a truckload of trouble.

Blue Diablo

After leaving her lover and manager, Chance 18 months earlier, Corine Solomon has made a life for herself in Mexico City. She opened a little pawnshop and sells goods of all description, making a decent profit. She has been comfortable and made very sure she covered her tracks when she walked out on Chance and her previous life.

However, we would have no story without a hitch right?

Chance turns up at her shop to plead for help in locating his mother Yi-Min-Chin who has gone missing and considered kidnapped. Chance presents Corine with a little pewter Buddha that his mother considered her "luck" and begs her to handle it so they can glean some information with respect to Min's whereabouts.

Corine and Chance's relationship history is extremely tumultuous and needless to say, it goes against her better judgment to become involved with him again. She is about to send him packing, however when she sees the pewter Buddha, she knows something horrible has happened to Min, because she was never without it. Min is a woman who Corine had grown to care for. When Corine "handles" the Buddha, she senses Min's feelings, her fear and resignation at being taken, and she sees a white van she is escorted to. Corine's gift does come with a physically painful price that you will understand if you read the book.

Chance is gifted with luck. Essentially, wherever he goes things seem to go in his favor, no matter how bad the situation, nothing happens to him. However, his power doesn't extend to protecting those around him and because of this Corine was very nearly killed during their last "job" together.

Corine agrees to go to Laredo with Chance where his mother was last seen and Detective Jesse Saldana, from the "Crimes Against Persons Unit" or CAPERS is working on Yi-Min-Chin's disappearance. Chance knows the police have his mother's purse because it was found in the blood-spattered corner of an abandoned warehouse. Chance wants the purse so Corine can handle it.

Saldana, it turns out, is an empath and he and Corine feel and instant connection because of their gifts.

Here is a short example of the wonderful prose and Corine's (Ann Aguirre's) inherent wit. Chance and Corine arrive at the police station in Laredo and she is introduced to Jesse Saldana for the first time:

"My hormones gave a little skip as I gave him the once-over: an intriguing mix of long, tall Texan in battered boots, touched with Latin heat. He had legs that stretched forever in jeans faded almost to white, not the kind bought with designer "wear" but Levi's washed till the seams and creases got thin. He'd clipped his badge to his belt in plain sight.
As I checked out the rest of him, I admired shoulders showcased by a rumpled white shirt and a forest green blazer. He had a striped tie stuffed in his right jacket pocket, probably to satisfy the letter of the dress code. Nice face, I decided, if scruffy and unshaven. Frosting the hunk cake was a tousled mess of tawny, sun streaked hair."

Can I say, yum?

The stage is set for readers to be taken on a thrill ride where Corine and Chance battle a warlock, demons, spirits, zombies and a crime syndicate. The setting, steeped with Spanish influence is perfect for majic and the occult rituals. The first person narrative allows us to see, feel and hear the events that take place through Corine who is frightened half to death most of the time, but somehow prevails despite enduring one harrowing experience after another.

Then there is her frustration with her ex lover and I understood her cynicism given their history and Chance's occasional indifference. There is no sex in this book; however the story is steamy because it is rife with sexual tension and temptation, which Corine struggles to resist in the extreme. I was grinding my teeth wondering whether she might give in to Chance who wants her but has significant relationship issues and communication problems. And, there is Jesse who considers himself a mentor to Corine because of her gift, but a burgeoning attraction flames between them.

Ann Aguirre developed a strong cast of supporting characters who are drawn into a plot that is full of intrigue, and twists and turns.

It is not clear until the closing pages of the book whether Corine and Chance will succeed in their efforts to rescue Min.

I am looking forward to the next chapter of Corine Solomon's story.

Oh and by the way, the title of this book? You will never guess what it is derived from.

Corine Solomon is a woman in hiding, hiding from her past. Mexico City is where she ended up, running a pawn shop trying to have a normal life. When she was twelve, her mother was murdered. With her death, Corine was haunted by the loss and gifted with magic but not the way her mother probably intended. Handling involves touching objects, metal is the best and worst as it burns her palms, seeing what happened to that object. But doing it for a living with her boyfriend Chance brought her in contact with the most heartbreaking of cases and almost killed her. So she fled from her life and crossed the border in order to get as far from it as possible. Then one day, Chance comes to the store with his mother's pocket Buddha and asks for her help. His mother has been kidnapped and he needs to handle the Buddha. In return, he will help Corine find the people who murdered her mother. Corine is torn between staying safe in her new life or helping the man she still loves.

On April 7, 2009 you must go to the bookstore as fast as your car can carry you and buy this book!!!!!! Ann Aguirre is the BOMB! I loved this book, loved it so much that I could only make myself read a chapter at a time and then put it down. Otherwise, I would have flown through it in a big gorging rush! But there came a point in the story a little over halfway that I just couldn't do it anymore. I read in big chunks desperate to see what was going to happen. The character of Corine is so awesome; I wish she was real so we could go have margaritas with tequila shots. I loved the fact that just because she had a gift (or curse depending on your point of view), it didn't make her all knowing and all powerful. I liked the tug of war between her old life with Chance and the possibility of a romance with someone new. I loved the descriptions of Mexico and Texas that really gave a wonderful atmosphere to the story. This is one of the best urban fantasies I have read. I urge everyone to give this book a try as it will rock your socks off!

I checked out Blue Diablo because I absolutely loved Grimspace. I found it a little boring and a little annoying, although it did compel me just enough for me to finish reading.

Corine Solomon's mom was a witch who was burned to death by intolerant Southerners. Upon dying her mom gifts Corine with all her powers, manifesting in a psychometric ability--she's able to read the history of objects when she touches them. Not without price, though, as every time she reads something she feels the pain of her mother's death anew. So she ran away from her ex-bf Chance with whom she'd done a bunch of paid gigs searching out criminals and in the beginning of the novel, has built up a tenuous new life in Mexico.

In Blue Diablo, Chance finds Corine because his Korean mom Min has been kidnapped. They soon discover that a powerful warlock is behind the kidnapping, one who keeps killing people before they can get info on Min. In the process of their sleuthing, Corine gets hooked up with an Internet site full of other "gifted" people like her, and they discover that Min was involved with some shady stuff in her past.

Pros:
Some good action writing.

Cons:
As much as I wanted to like this book, I just couldn't buy it. If it had been set in a different world or time period, maybe it would have been easier. But it was obviously a contemporary novel, with all the brand name labels and stores and perfume titles constantly thrown at me (this was also a point of annoyance--I'd rather have perfume scents or clothing described to me than brand names given when I have no idea what those perfumes smell like and don't know 3/4 the brand names used) (Furthermore it bugged me that people were turned on so much by other people's perfume because I hate perfume and think it's stinky). And contemporary knowledge of psychic abilities, pagan practices, witches and warlocks, doesn't divide people up into "gifted" and "non-gifted," simply everybody has some ability, and everybody can work on honing that ability. The idea of all kinds of ultra-talented psychics/mediums/paranormal people networking at bars and online is just silly. I suppose not any sillier than, for instance, the Twilight sparkling vampires premise, but this book just takes everything remotely paranormal and lumps it into this one "gifted" category and I just didn't feel enough of a cosmology was created to support its existence in the society I live in.

I thought Corine was rather likable, but her character was almost exactly like Sirantha Jax's in Grimspace. I found Chance really irritating, unlike the male lead in Grimspace. Maybe it was because of the whole mom thing, I dunno. Going after a kidnapped mom shouldn't make a man a mama's boy, but combined with him being so pretty and also very thin, and also not doing a lot of memorable manly things, I just couldn't get into him.

I'm going on rather long here so I'll just add that I thought the plot rather disjointed--still don't quite understand what was going on in several places--and I agree with the other reviewers who thought there was a bit too much in the way of food descriptions. And I don't get why we had to pay so much attention to her hair being red or why it was red even.

Conclusion: If you haven't read Grimspace, go read it! It's WAY better--I don't understand how Blue Diablo could be rated higher.

I've been looking forward to reading this for a long time. Disappointed does not even begin to describe how I feel. Usually, I can read any UF and enjoy it, but Blue Diablo was not enjoyable at all. I see that many do not agree, but I would like to present some of the reasons I did not enjoy this book so that prospective readers have both the positive and negative viewpoints. First, the novel is largely bickering between the main character and her ex. I understand that they are exploring why their relationship went bad, and one or both parties are trying to rekindle something, but it was not enjoyable to me. The first 100 pages consist almost entirely of dialogue between the ex lovers with a few other characters thrown in occasionally. I do enjoy dialogue heavy novels, but not when the dialogue is banter between two people that already know each other, whom the reader knows nothing about. I like to find out about my characters before having to deal with their relationship issues, but that's just my personal preference. My second issue was the plot and mystery behind the novel. We are told fairly quickly that the novel is about finding the mother to Corine's ex, but the mystery solving is agonizingly slow to me. Everything unfolds in a fairly predictable manor. Corine starts by using her power to tell where an object has been to find clues to where the missing person is located. Then they follow one obvious clue to another obvious clue. Talking to one person leads to another person that is helpful. It's really too simple for me, and not enough to get me through a book with characters that I did not enjoy. Even with all of the dialogue between characters, I have to say I never got a feel for Corine. There isn't one thing that sets her apart from anyone else. I personally found her flimsy, and not likable, again that is just my opinion. I'm trying not to step on any toes with my review. I find that UF books are largely mystery, world building, and characters. If any one of those things are strong, the others do no have to be perfect for me to enjoy it. I didn't enjoy the characters in Blue Diablo, the world building and magic were not strong and were not unique, and the mystery solving was too linear for me. That, of course, is not to say that others will not enjoy this book, but I personally did not like it at all.

One of the biggest complaints I have with urban fantasy as a whole is that it tends to lean very far into the paranormal and make realism second place. Not so with Ann Aguirre's latest offering, Blue Diablo, which, put simply, is To Cast a Deadly Spell meets Commando.

Corine Solomon is a woman on the run. She's settled in Mexico City and managed to keep up a life as a shopkeeper for eighteen months when her ex-boyfriend, one of the many people she's hiding from, walks in her shop door. She still isn't over Chance, not what he put her through or her love for him. But none of it matters because Chance asks for Corine for the one thing he knows she'll give-her help finding his kidnapped mother.

Corine isn't the only person whose past has caught up with them, but she is the only one who can help because Min, Chance's mother, has left a trail of clues that only Corine's gift of psychometry (psychic reading of events through objects) can decipher.

Blue Diablo stands out from the genre, not just because it wholly encompasses "bad guys" outside of the serial killer and supernatural varieties, or because of its higher than typical body count. One of the biggest stand out features of this book is the cast of realistic, almost entirely minority characters and non-Celtic/European magic mythos.

In comparison to Aguirre's other books (Grimspace and Wanderlust) Blue Diablo is a true blend of the genres that make urban fantasy; fantasy, mystery, romance and horror, whereas the former are science fiction with romantic elements. Blue Diablo's heroine and hero are no less emotionally tortured, in either their pasts or their feelings for each other.

Aguirre likes the devastated hero, and the heroine whose power costs something. Readers who like mixed blessings in their magic and desperate, delicious heroes will find a lot to like in Aguirre's books. Nothing comes easy, if at all. Not defeating the bad guy, or winning the day or even getting the guy/girl. It makes Blue Diablo not an effortless read, but a tension-filled exciting tale nonetheless.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars


BLUE DIABLO is the sort of urban fantasy that effortlessly sinks its claws into your mind and demands your undivided attention. The problem is, once you become its victim (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it's one hell of a journey), the story begins to run in circles the further you progress.

The romance between Corine and Chance both had me salivating for more, and rebelling in disgust. Chance's character felt more on the two dimensional side at some points, making me wonder what Corine saw in the man. I wasn't sold on their love completely, and I think this had more to do with Corine's doubts and thoughts than anything else. Despite that, I felt he was the perfect match for his ex, and their bickering amused me.

A few hiccups in the story ripped me out of Corine's universe and left me scratching my head from either the weirdness (ex: Kel), or because of the repetition (ex: Corine continually mentioning how she should get a passport. Also, the group's lack of having any idea of where to go made the book not only seem like it was losing focus, but also made it felt temporarily monotonous/the situation hopeless). This only occurred once or twice, but it was enough to make note of that. Also, there were a few moments where the story slowed down, and in these moments, I was more than happy to walk away and take a breather (but not for long). Those not fully invested in this world may walk away for good during any one these lulls.

Overall, BLUE DIABLO's a great read, but one can easily discern that Corine's birth into the publishing world occurred years ago; the writing and the storyline barely hold a candle to Aguirre's newly released dystopian, ENCLAVE.

Why the heck did it take me so long to read this book? I have had it on my reader for at least a year and just kept on passing it by. What a mistake that was and I'm glad I finally opened it up and started reading it. Corrine was a very like-able character, I enjoyed her gift, she can pick something up and find out the history of it or the person that owned it but it comes at an expense to her as she is usually seriously burned on her hands from the reading. Chance her ex lover/boyfriend and her have a difficult working relationship throughout the entire book. I really like Chance but I can see Corrine's hesitation to be anything more then being friends with him. He does sound hunky though. The supporting characters were all interesting and engaging. I especially liked Eva, you could tell from the moment she came into the story she was going to be a fantastic addition to Corrine's life. BLUE DIABLO also happened to be the first Ann Aguirre book and if her writing is as fantastic as it was in BLUE DIABLO I will have to check out her other books. I think BLUE DIABLO was a fantastic start to what will be a great Urban Fantasy series and I'm excited to pick up HELL FIRE.

Originally posted at Wicked Lil Pixie Reviews.
Anyone who follows me on Twitter or has seen my previous reviews knows what a huge fan of Ann Aguirre I am. Her "Jax" series is one of my alltime favorites, and I love her writing as Ava Gray. So, it is understandable that my expectations for Blue Diablo, the first novel in her UF Corine Solomon series, were pretty high. I am pleased to say my expectations were met once again by Ms. Aguirre.

Blue Diablo moves along at a very quick pace and is brimming with non-stop action. There is a fantastic plot twist with one of the characters that is a great touch to the story. This book has multi-dimensional characters that include warlocks, religious zealots, wizards, clairvoyants, empaths, hermetic scholars, former arms dealers, drug cartels, and maybe a prostitute here and there. Corine herself is a "handler" - she can handle items and voluntarily see where the item has been, and also where it is going. This gift, however, has a very painful price. Her ex-boyfriend hunts her down and seeks her help with solving a mystery that is very close to them both. There is some juicy sexual tension but it's certainly not the main focus of the plot, story, or series.

As our heroine Corine is told once or twice in Blue Diablo, she has a mean-streak, and boyyy, does she. And I loved it. I enjoyed her snark without the whiney woe-is-me poppycock. She has taken control over her life and tells people where they stand in it. There is one part where I gasped and thought "I caaaan't belieeeve she did that!" Ann Aguirre's excellent character building still had me empathizing with some of the things Corine is compelled to do or say, even if it seems really cold-hearted initially. That is how well her character is written. Comedic relief, and there is not much, is provided in the form of Chuch and his wife Eva. They are awesome secondary characters and will immediately endear you to them. There are other very strong and enchanting secondary characters that make up a great cast you look forward to seeing in the books to come. Something else to note that was a nice touch is that each chapter has a title, not a number. It helped the flow of the book and gave it a nice feel that added value to the overall story.

Blue Diablo is a solid debut for an Urban Fantasy series. The Corine Solomon series is set to be a 5 book series. The next book in the Corine Solomon series is Hell Fire and I very much look forward to reading it! Shady Lady will be out in April of this year.

Blue Diablo
Hell Fire
Shady Lady - April 2011
Devil's Punch - 2012
Bloody Maria - 2013