A couple months ago I picked up a supernatural fantasy with one of the best covers I’ve seen in a long time, Faith Hunter‘s Skinwalker.

There, see? Isn’t that fabulous? That is not a woman who needs a man to care for her, not matter what life (and un-life) throw at her.

Kudos to Roc who manages usually has very good covers for its fantasy books. But I’m not here to talk about covers–I just like to point out excellent covers when I come across them.

Skinwalker is about Jane Yellowrock, a vampire hunter and a skinwalker–the only one of her kind as far as she knows. She’s been hired by a local vampire council to take out a rogue zombie, lest the reputation of vampires be further sullied. OK, Jane wouldn’t actually use the term sullied, but I like it. Jane is what I love best about good supernatural fantasy: she’s a strong heroine but is far more than a male action hero with breasts (as opposed to heaving bosoms).

Because I enjoyed Skinwalker so much, I decided to pick up Faith Hunter’s “Rogue Mage” series. This series was good, but I didn’t like it nearly as well. Partially because it was in some ways a kissing/boinking book. As much as I liked the story, one of the twists was that mages have an environmental estrus that they cannot control. And of course the main character almost goes into heat multiple times, and at the worst possible moments. That just bugged me. I got over it, and I saw what Faith Hunter was trying to do, but unfortunately it ended up somewhat reducing my enjoyment of the story.

Which is too bad, because it was a fascinating story, set more than a century in the future, after wars and plagues have destroyed a good part of the world.

So the Rogue Mage series was good, but not one of the best I’ve read. I found Jane Yellowrock to be a much stronger character, and the world in which she lived was a bit easier to understand.

Jane Yellowrock: Skinwalker (2009)
Rogue Mage: Bloodring (2006), Seraphs (2007), Host (2007)