After chugging through Phaedra Weldon’s Wraith, I was definitely in the mood to go right back to good ol’ Tanya Huff, so I went for Smoke and Mirrors, Book 2 of her Tony Foster series.
And really, Tanya Huff just continues to solidly entertain. It’s less rare than it used to be to have an urban fantasy series with a male protagonist, but it’s still very, very rare to have an urban fantasy series with a queer protagonist. So just being able to read one is cool.
It helps of course that the Tony Fosters are entertaining reads as well. This installment follows up some months in time to the events of Book 1, when the TV production Tony works for goes to an allegedly haunted house to shoot an episode on location–and, surprise surprise, the house is of course actually haunted. Huff delivers some decently creepy haunts in the story, and the two young children who are the most significant ghost characters bring a lot to the story. Tony’s secret magical ability also leaks to his coworkers in the progression of events, nicely advancing his arc with that and forcing him to start taking more charge of his gifts.
I won’t say much about the progression of Tony’s love life as I would run into the territory of spoilers, but I was at least simultaneously pleased and disappointed by events on that front herein. Still though it’s a refreshing change of pace to see a relationship cease between a previous book and a subsequent one, and yet have the involved parties remain on good terms. More situations like this, please! Let us cut down on the angst.
I will of course be reading Book 3, which is already on my To Read shelf. For this one, four stars.