Customer Reviews

Skin Deep (Laura Blackstone, Book 1)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In a world where Fey and human are one hundred years into an uneasy coexistence, after a mysterious convergence between Faerie and the mortal world, Laura Blackstone is a public relations director for the Fey Guild; druid Janice Crawford has been seconded to Washington DC SWAT to help out in operations where magical assistance is required; and Mariel Tate is one of the top officials at Intersec, the International Global Security Agency which deals with international criminal threats: they are also the same person. Operating under glamours - illusions which allow her to appear as someone else - Laura has crafted a range of different identities which allow her to work in Washington's law enforcement community and gather information as one of Intersec's most secret agents. It's a demanding life, needing constant care and attention to keep her various lives straight, and like all secret agents she faces the risk of burning out from the stresses of the job, but she feels she's doing good for both her people, and humanity.

A seemingly routine outing as Janice, however, to support SWAT in raiding a drug factory suspected of having Brownie back-up, ends up with Laura encountering a far more powerful opponent, an Inverni Fairy, and being shot, seemingly by one of her own team. It appears she has stumbled into something far more dangerous: a conspiracy reaching into both the human senate and the depths of Fey politics, and which has its roots in a long hidden injustice. It's going to take all of Laura's identities, and magical skills to stay alive and unravel the plot before it can reach its deadly climax.

Skin Deep is, we are told, the first of a series of novels Mark Del Franco has planned featuring Laura Blackstone, and in many ways it does seem to be setting the scene: there's the introduction of a variety of characters and hints at the development of a relationship for Laura, the plot which leaves various elements unresolved for the future, and a great deal of general scene-setting, none of which, it has to be said, Del Franco allows to get in the way of keeping the plot moving, covering everything in just under 300 pages.

As urban fantasies go, Skin Deep seems to have all the right ingredients: the blending of mythical beings with the modern world, a courageous yet isolated protagonist, a developing romance, nefarious plots and heroic deeds, and yet I have to say I found it somewhat uninvolving. Only Laura is well-developed as a character, and she still doesn't have much to distinguish her - even the hints that she may be have an incipient drink-problem seem more like a standard secret-agent quirk than a genuine character trait. Added to that, the plot, which has her doing a great deal of groping in the dark, while dodging assassination attempts on her various identities fails to really grip. On the other hand, setting the novel in the bear-pit of Washington, and making at least some of Laura's conflicts political rather than physical is a novel idea, and the suggestions of further developments to come in the history and political relations between the Fey is enough to excite some interest - and there's no doubt that it is an undemanding read and a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours if you're an urban fantasy fan.

Overall, then, I'm not sure whether I'll be obtaining the second volume of Laura's adventures when it comes out - most likely the answer will depend on whether I've got any other new purchases on my shelf at the time, which I want to read more.

Laura Blackstone is a Druidess who is head of PR for the Fey Guild in Washington DC. She's also well to do Mariel Tate, an operative in the international intelligence agency with enough connections and respect to get high ranking DC officials to give her what she needs. And to help out the DC Swat Team, she's Janice Crawford of InterSec, a Druidess with limited powers struggling to make ends meet.

Laura has always done her best for the Guild and the various Fey agencies that interconnect, often creating a glamour and persona to go undercover and help out the other agencies. Juggling three at a time and keeping them separate is getting difficult and tiring, especially when there are only two people who are aware of it and neither one is her staff.

Janice is called in to take out two brownie guards for a drug operation when SWAT raids a drug house. But they'd purposely been fed misinformation and one of the brownies is actually an Inverni fairy glamoured to look like a brownie, but as powerful as Laura is. The whole thing goes sour and Sanchez, the man teamed up with Janice is shot in the neck. He's trying to tell her something when a bullet grazes her head. She's now got temporary amnesia and can recall everything except for who shot them and what Sanchez was trying to tell her before he died.

While juggling her personas and someone trying multiple times to kill Janice, they uncover something much larger than a drug operation that extends the story beyond this first book. The series is set in the same world as the Connor Grey series where a Convergence took place between the Fey and human realms and we now have the Fey living in this realm. Lots of politics with the different Fey factions.

Told from the first person POV, we don't know a great deal about the other characters, or for that matter, much about Laura, although even she admits she spends so much time in her different personas that she doesn't know who the real person is anymore. This makes for a somewhat uncomfortable read. But there are a number of action scenes that are well written and I couldn't guess where the major underlining mystery leads to.

I like DelFranco's writing a lot, and have read all of his Connor Grey series so far.

The Laura Blackstone series starts off a bit rushed-- I felt like DelFranco couldn't be bothered to take the time to tell us about her back story, but also didn't go to the effort of smoothly working in that back story into the narrative. Perhaps he tried, but it didn't quite work well enough for me.

That said, I like the world he's built and think it's interesting to set a series of stories in another city of that universe-- specifically Washington, DC. The politics are just enough intrigue for my taste (not much), and as usual I really felt like the characters had some kind of lives outside the events of the story. The ending was particularly satisfying in that way, with some characters surprising Laura with their perceptiveness. And that Laura isn't necessarily the one who has to ultimately do *everything* to bring the book to a close was nice as well.

The identity-switching stuff didn't do much for me. I didn't feel like that was anything other than a cursory mechanism to move between parts of a story. The scenes involving the identities were all entertaining, it's just that Laura as an undercover agent and all the details and strategies and skills of being an undercover agent felt underserved by the writing. I guess may I feel that to do justice to all the ideas and topics brought up in this book, it should have been about 100 pages longer.

I'm looking forward to the next one, but I'm looking forward to the next Connor Grey novel a lot more.

I don't understand these reviews; I really liked the book. I had read his 'Connor Gray' series and thought that a very good series. For a long time I would not buy this book because of these reviews. Then, I decided that if I liked the other series so well I ought to try this myself and was surprised to find it a good read. I thought it quite understandable that Laura has not much of a personality because she works all the time and splits her life into 3 personalities. In the book, she sees that herself. I will definitely buy the next book.

Laura Blackston, Washington D.C. Fey Guild public relations manager, is a woman of many talents -- and disguises. With the use of a three-carat emerald, she expertly creates and maintains a skin deep glamour as three separate people. In addition to her persona as Celtic fey Laura, she also works undercover as Druid police agent Janice Crawford, and International Global Security Agency terrorist expert Mariel Tate. She leads a busy life juggling three lives that no one else must know about.

While assisting the police SWAT team on a meth drug raid as Janice, her partner is killed and she is also attacked. With her magical skill this could never have happened unless someone else with powerful magic was involved. Janice's investigation into what went wrong leads her to connections to her other personas. Someone has made a connection between the three women she portrays and wants her dead. Now all three characters and their carefully constructed worlds are about to collide.

Laura is a unique, well-developed character, and her magic abilities and "split personalities" make this book an interesting read. The author takes great care to provide details of how magic is constructed and used. For example: "A masking spell created the illusion of a wall, tactilely and visually. The spell was keyed to her body signature, and it tingled over her body like cobwebs." These kinds of details throughout allow the reader to suspend disbelief and enjoy the story.

Another thing the author does well is to explain the relationships between the various magical entities. For example: Two Fey factions, the Celtics ruled by High Queen Maeve of Ireland, and the Teutonic fey ruled by Donor Elfenkonig of Germany, are hostile toward each other. There's also infighting among many of the other magical creatures, and the fact that they live in the human realm creates lots of extra drama. Of course there's plenty of action to keep the pages turning.

Packed with fairies, brownies, elves, dwarves and other classic fantasy creatures, this action-packed novel introduces a great new urban fantasy series. The story content has layers of texture that should keep its reader engaged till the final page.

Fresh Fiction

I loved the last Connor Grey book (Uncertain Allies) so much, I decided to give this series a try since it's set in the same world. What a great decision because I enjoyed this book tremendously. I had reservations because I love Connor so much, I mean...how could something set in the same world even compare...but much to my delight I stumbled on to a good thing. It's certainly not riding on Connor's coat tails either, there's a definite different feel to this book. But the characters are just as rich and the story is wonderfully told and I should have had more faith in Mark Del Franco's talent. His work will always be on my 'to be read' list.

I have read all the Connor Grey, druid series of the troubled Druid in fey/human boston and enjoyed them tremendously.

This series sets a high powered female druid in Washington DC battling problems between the Fey and human worlds. She has many personas "glamours" in the book to be undercover and handle several sides of each situation.

It is highly readible and it is interesting to me, how Mr. Del franco can spin a tale with such politics and action while using the fantasitc worlds of fairies.

I am in process of reading the second book "face-off" about Laura Blackstone now and while it has a little different tone, it is just as enjoyable. I do like his style of writing.

First, I should probably note that I would not have bought this book had I remembered that Mark del Franco wrote the Connor Grey books, since I did not like the one of those I read.

This book is set in the same universe as Connor Grey. Back in 1914, the Fey world somehow merged with our world, and the competing Celtic and Germanic Fey found themselves dealing with early 20th century humans. It's not clear to me if WWI still happened, but at any rate del Franco's history diverged from ours there. The US has come to terms (literally, by treaty -- a plot element) with the existence of the Fey, and many of them are US citizens though humans suspect (accurately) that they have divided loyalties.

This books heroine is the century old Druid (druids are non-human fey in this universe) Laura Blackstone who leads a needlessly complicated life as she maintaines three personas, from high-powered diplomat, to mid-level Fey guild functionary to combat-magic street cop. Normally she manages to keep all her personas and their associated web of relationships separate, but now they all seem to be converging as she picks up traces of a terrorist plot centered on the historic Fey/US/UK treaty.

I felt the book was well-enough written, but it did not grab me at all. Perhaps the third person narrative, unusual in Urban Fantasy, was too distancing, but in the end I was left with two big problems. First, I could not reconcile myself to Laura's multiple personas. It just seemed a completely pointless way to complicate her life to no good end. She spends a lot of effort deceiving even fairly close friends. I couldn't believe that if she picked one life to live that she couldn't find enough worthwhile stuff to devote herself to. It was just odd and offputting. Second, I just did not care enough about the stakes involved. In fact, I'm not entirely sure I understood them. Apart from the immediate danger, the political inter-Fey clan complications were not well explained, and I just couldn't care about them. (This is somewhat similar to how I felt about the resolution of Hunter's _Mercy Blade_: too overcomplicated to be gripping)

A person staying at my house left this book when she finished it and I picked it up to read. I did get through it. It could have been better. In my opinion, too much time was spent explaining the politics (which I could care less about in that much depth) and the different politics for each "race" or entity. That slowed it down way too much for me and I ended up skimming over those parts. I'll probably give the next book a try and take it from there.

I've got a bit of a split view of Skin Deep. On the one hand it definitely held my attention and kept me turning the pages. The lead character is interesting and it's a well-crafted mystery in terms of keeping the reader guessing to the end. Also, typical of the author's prior work, there's action from start to finish. On the other hand, I'm a fan of Del Franco's Connor Grey books and this one comes up a little bit short. Maybe it's a question of location connection for me (I work in the area of Boston which is the main focus of the Connor Grey series, while this one is based in DC). Maybe it's just a question of the supporting cast and elements just not being quite so well fleshed out. Whatever the case, I just didn't get as absorbed into the story in this book as in the earlier ones. I'm willing to give the next title a try, though. I'd give it a 3.5 star rating if I could.