Well, if you get tired of stories that take a long time to get going, you won’t have that problem here. It starts as a quiet day and routine sale for a Detroit witch in a curio shop, but next thing you know an unwelcome visitor is demanding help with some Things that used to be dogs, and after that it’s a wild chase of one darn terrifying thing after another in rapidfire succession. This is simply an imaginative,  stylishly written, fast paced urban fantasy romp, narrated by a sarky, sexy magician with a strong sense of self preservation and a helpful but demanding secret sidekick.

"I’m a witch, yes. But I’m not just a witch. I’m possessed by a creature of living shadow, a being from beyond this reality. Or maybe it’s possessed by me. After a while, it gets kind of hard to tell the difference."

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First chapter is well-written and flows well.  Does read a bit like the Dresden Files, complete with an uneasy relationship between a magic user and "the Law", but in this case the Law is a witchhunter.  Worth checking out.

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Cross-posted from my blog:

What do Lovecraftian Demons, power-hungry magicians, heavily-armed religious fanatics, and vampire mobsters all have in common? They’re all trying to ruin Alice’s Day.

That’s the mini-blurb from the masthead of "Black Alice – An Urban Fantasy Serial Novel By Marci Sisho And James Agle", and I like it better than the one on this, which starts with the inspiring declaration "Very similar to the Dresden Files of Jim Butcher".

Now, I am a fan of the Dresden Files, but I am not a fan of clone-fiction.  However for the amount of highly popular clone fiction of various trailblazers a lot of people do, so I understand why they’d want to point it out.

But I am a fan of real Urban Fantasy (which is not paranormal romance shudders) and that can be hard to find (except for the aforementioned Dresden Files). So I thought I’d have a look. After all it costs nothing to have a look . . . 

 . . . eight chapters later I was late to my bed on a work night and snarling at my computer because it’s unfinished.

This is not a clone of the Dresden Files. It is very similar, but that’s because it shares a set of genre conventions with those books. I’d be very surprised to meet an Urban Fantasy where there wasn’t some sort of supernatural trouble exploding into the mundane world. And the main character in Black Alice has a personal supernatural problem that makes Harry Dresden’s look minor – her Shadow.

The one place I think it does crib the Dresden Files shamelessly is in the first person narrative style, but that seems to be increasingly popular anyway and it certainly creates narrative closeness.

The good:

*It isn’t a clone of the Dresden Files, just the same genre. *The plot is gripping (if you like the genre like me) *It’s well written in general *Decent Characterization *Well presented, clean layout is easy to read. *It’s free (I know I always say this, but it bears repeating).

The bad:

*Exposition, info-dumping, passages of back-story – call it what you will if it’s interrupting the present story to explain stuff or grant context it could have been handled better. *The depiction of the witch hunters may offend some Catholics (or just provoke face-palming like it did in me). *It isn’t finished yet and only updates sporadically.

The verdict:

Black Alice is a decent and intriguing urban fantasy serial which is well worth taking a look at if you like the genre. It’s not perfect, but few things are.

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