The Vanity Case is now available. This is the first Sondra Blake novel, about a detective and her partner working to solve cases of magical crime in an alternative New York City.
The Vanity Case
This entry was posted in News, Sondra Blake and tagged books, characters, ebook. Bookmark the permalink.
Witches and Ray-Guns 
Just started reading it, up and running on Amazon uk 😀
I just got the ASIN, so if it’s on .uk, it should be on .com, maybe some of the others. If anyone else is hunting, the ASIN is above.
It s on amazon .de
Niall, I was getting bored! And lo and behold! You come through again.
Found it on .com
It’s on all the sites now, and I’ve added links above.
Just finished 🙂 top notch! And looking forward to book two if you have one planned. And I hope you do.
Planned is a strong word. 🙂
I’d like to do some more books with Sondra and Clarke. When I come up with an interesting case for them, there’ll be more.
I finished it as well. A very interesting new world you have created here. Interesting characters as well – I’m glad that this time not all male characters are evil. At one point I was wondering who might be the president in your US.
Unfortunately I got a lot of deja-vu moments when reading about police work, serial killers and gang riots.
Oddly, I was thinking about who the president was around lunchtime. I might even get a plot out of it. Uh, the president doesn’t have his name on the sides of buildings in Sondra’s world.
Unfortunately, police work and serial killers tend to be common in police procedurals. If the presidential story goes ahead, there may not be any riots or serial killers, but there will be police work.
Got it, next in the queue.
I didn’t really click with this one at first, but really started liking it about a third of the way in. Loved the world building.
I enjoyed the book the characters and the story. My biggest fear it’s it’s another orphan like Reality Hack, Unobtainium, Zanari, and Gunwitch.
halfway through the book i was hoping she wouldn’t catch the killer, and the series would follow her and the killer through time, skipping 7*n years per book.
it was fun despite that not being the case. 🙂
Interesting idea, but I got complaints when I allowed villains to get away alive/not arrested in the Ultrahumans books, so I think I’d get more if I followed a pattern like that.
I think you’d need a more interesting killer, if you see what I mean. You’d need to have a bad guy that was more like an anti-hero, but less heroic. And it would probably need to be a different author; I kind of specialise in things where the bad guys get their just desserts in the end.
Yes, that would require a bit more of a Moriarty than Sondra facing this time around.
The setting reminds me a bit of the netflix movie bright and a bit of shadowrun without the unchecked capitalism, or a mix of thaumatology 101 and fox meridian. A bit worried that NIX is just replaced with FBI.
Thought it a bit strange that the only thing coming over were magic, orcs and faries, especially when faries are basically humanoid feral cats (been a little while since I read the book so I might be forgetting something), though I guess it has been hinted at that Sondra might be something more then merely human. Immortality is a big hint, but the paragraph with the partner smelling her and freaking out a bit really hammers that home
I think Bright prompted the idea. I still haven’t got around to watching it yet, so I don’t know how close the settings are.
There are more than just the fairies and orcs (and magic) which transferred over, but the orcs are the bit that really affected North America. And I wanted a cute fairy in there. And I know the fairies in Thaumatology are as intelligent as humans, but the Sondra-world fairies are a bit more anatomically probable. If your brain is the size of a mouse’s brain, you aren’t going to be as sentient as a human.
But there are a few other things which came across. We may meet one of them in the next book.
Congratulations Sir,
Very nice start to what I hope is a long series. I’ve never been fond of cop stories unless it had the sci-fi/fantasy aspect to it. I further hope you have trouble deciding what to publish next. Funny thing though is that while others have commented about the different influences, the one that came to mind is “Alien Nation”.
I had entirely forgotten about ‘Alien Nation,’ but I suppose there’s a link. They all fall into an ‘insert alien species into modern society’ genre.
That could work in the Thaumatology universe as well. Now simple demons can immigrate, who don’t want anything else than to live in peace, and a demon (insert any job description here) doesn’t sound too odd.
I too wondered if Bright had affected the story. I got into the book straight away and enjoyed it. I suspect that Sondra is a hybrid, maybe with the soul of a human magician from the Other Side. Loved the fairy. Definitely a different take.
Actually, the fairy was influenced by something too. Partially it was just physics: there’s no way to make an intelligent being with a brain that size without resorting to magic.
However, anyone remember the fairies in the movie Labyrinth?
And as for your comment on Sondra… I am not going to make any further comment.