Working for the Devil

Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow

416 pages
ISBN: 978-0446616706
Paperback (6.5” x 4.2” x 1.1”) 7.99
Illustration: Larry Rostant
Publisher: Orbit/Yen (September 2007)
Books in series: 5

From LilithSaintcrow.com:

Necromance-for-hire Dante Valentine is choosy about her jobs. Hot-tempered and with nerves of steel, she can raise the dead like nobody’s business. But one rainy Monday morning, everything goes straight to Hell.

The Devil hires Dante to eliminate a renegade demon: Vardimal Santino. In return, he will let her live. It’s an offer she can’t refuse.

There’s just one catch. How do you kill something that can’t die?

Consensus: This was probably the first dark, paranormal/urban series I read and what attracted me were the cover and the title. The series has a few faults, one being that the author uses some of the same descriptive phrases over and over; I stopped wanting to hear about Dante’s “black molecule drip” manicure. She’s a badass, though over time, she gets a little whiney but I don’t blame her since she’s kept in the dark about information she ought to know. That also creates another problem: because Dante doesn’t know that info, the readers don’t either. Saintcrow never really answers some of our questions about the relationship between the Fallen and their lady "friends".

Despite all this, I really enjoyed Dante and her profession, as well as her friends. Readers seem to like Jace, an ex-flame, quite a bit. I also really liked some of the historical tangents or segues the author provides to explain how we have all the unlikely professions that are commonplace – like Necromance, for example. Besides demons (and Lucifer), the books also feature werewolves and vampires and a few other mythical creatures that I haven’t encountered in popular fantasy.