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Chargement... Life and Limb (2019)par Jennifer Roberson
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A biker and a cowboy must stop the apocalypse in the first book of the Blood and Bone modern western fantasy series. His voice was rich, a much loved baritone, as he handed his seven-year-old grandson a gun. "It's time we had a talk, you and I. You won't remember it, but you need to know it, and one day, when it's time, I'll call it up in you. You'll know who you are, and what you're intended to do. You'll be a soldier, boy. Sealed to it. Life and limb, blood and bone. Not a soldier like others are, for it's not the kind of war most people fight on earth. But because we're not 'most people,' you and I, it will be far more important. The fate of the world will hinge upon it." Now no longer that wide-eyed child, Gabe is fresh out of prison, a leather-clad biker answering Grandaddy's peremptory summons to, of all places, a cowboy bar in Northern Arizona. He is about to find out just how different he is from "most people"--and to meet the stranger with whom he will be sealed: life and limb, blood and bone, conscripted to fight an unholy war unlike any other. For the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. When he does. And Gabe, thrown into the unlikely company of a country-music-loving rodeo cowboy from West Texas, an ancient Celtic goddess of war, an African Orisha who sings volcanoes awake, a Chinese goddess of mercy, Nephilim, and Grigori, finds himself fighting a battle he was bred for, but wants no part of. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Life and Limb, the first volume in her new “Blood and Bone” series, is no exception. She’s begun with a nifty concept: an ex-con biker (Gabriel Harlan) teams up with a clean-cut cowboy (Remi McCue) to fight supernatural nasties and stop the looming apocalypse. And oh yes, they both grew up with a mysterious grandfather, Grandaddy Jubal Horatio Tanner who isn’t human, and neither are they, or not entirely.
In many ways, Life and Limb is the set-up for that conflict, the origin story. Certainly, there’s plenty of action, both internal and external, and a host of adversaries and allies. Grandaddy Jubal has other teams to enlist, so he leaves our heroes in the care of Lily Morrigan (as in “The” Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of war, fate and death). Hell’s vents have opened, pouring forth an army of mythological nasties (ghosts, vampires, black dogs, and the like) which now can get infected by demons. Their skills are complementary: Gabe is a crack shooter with guns, but Remi is expert with throwing knives. Gabe has an unerring sense for the rightness (or wrongness) of a place, while Remi’s gift is reading people. And while they’re sniffing out and doing away with demonic presences, the Morrigan tells them, “hell knows you’re here.”
The narrative voice, from Gabe’s first-person perspective, is richly evocative, and the handling of detail, setting and nuance is top-notch, flavored with my favorite cultural references. Therein lies both the book’s strength and its challenge. The heart of the book’s energy, its center, is the emotional and spiritual journey of these two characters. Neither just accepts at face value their angelic nature or their destiny. Much of the story revolves around challenging what they have been told, grappling with how their lives will never the same, figuring out what each means to the other, and along the way making near-fatal mistakes, either from inflated self-confidence or ignorance. They learn by slow steps, often circling around to the same questions before moving on. This is how we humans deal with events and information that changes our entire understanding of the cosmos and our role in it. We question, we negotiate, we accept, then we question some more. Sometimes we have to ask the same questions over and over in different ways until the answers make sense. All the while, these characters get to know one another, overcoming skepticism and distrust. The pacing sometimes feels slow because so much is happening inside and between Gabe and Remi. This isn’t a problem for me since much of the pleasure of reading a character-rich novel is in falling in love with those characters (in other words, it’s a feature, not a bug). However, not all readers are willing to slow down and enjoy the (gorgeous, sexy) scenery, so I suspect readers will either be impatient and bored or, like me, adore this awesome urban fantasy. ( )