Again, the Amazon Kindle app on my iPhone allows me to support and enjoy the work of a newly published author and relatively long-time Twitter friend. She writes under the name Elaine Calloway, and the first title of her Elemental Clans series is Water’s Blood.
The four essentially nonhuman characters represent the natural elements: water, wind, earth, and fire. They have assumed human form, and their primary job is to protect humans from the Minare, or Fallen Angels. These fallen angels, not surprisingly, work under the guidance of Lucifer. The elementals are commanded by a force referred to as “universe”.
In Water’s Blood, Brooke, the water elemental, creates major challenges when she meets, falls in love, and ultimately mates with a New Orleans police officer named Alex. She thus gives birth to a half-human, half-elemental child named Ella, over whom the Fallen Angels immediately go into motion to try and claim. Their big prize? Ella’s soul.
Brooke and Alex are forbade from remaining coupled up, as Universe requires that elementals not let their powers be known to the masses for fear that these powers might be misinterpreted. They are thus forced to live under a maddening, especially to Alex, set of rules that allow Brooke only to see Ella occasionally and in a detached way that avoids revealing the fact that Brooke is actually her mother.
Set against the already magical, mysterious backdrop of New Orleans, Water’s Blood is filled with moments of amazement, amusement, sadness, and nerve-racking intensity.
We cringe as Brooke is forced to reign herself in during bar interactions, as she works serving drinks and is sometimes accosted by fallen angel hinchmen.
We also are given vivid descriptions of New Orleans scenery, including a fun dog show on the levy and jugglers on unicycles in another part of that frenetic city.
The story is told in the third person, with most of the emphasis being placed on Alex and Brooke’s perspectives. We do ride along though as Ella makes her first, unknowing, encounters with the bad guys who vow to subvert her and thereby seriously undermine the work done by Brooke and her colleagues.
I like that all of the elementals have names that reference their element of power. Phoenix represents fire, and Tempest is powered by wind, for example.
The second book in this series entitled Raging Fire, was just very recently published. It takes up Phoenix’s story and the things he primarily had to deal with. I plan to read it next. They certainly make for good reads during public transit commutes, as they call on one to be more aware of the interesting mix of people and perhaps odd, or just misperceived things that might be going on around one.
If you’d like to kind of get your feet wet before diving all the way in, I’d advise reading the prequel first. It’s free, on SmashWords, and entitled Droplet. Only 5 pages or so, it does help lead you into the story with a little more understanding of how things will unfold.
As usual for me, I’ve not actually finished reading this first book yet. I like to review it about a third of the way in, both so that I hopefully have enough of an understanding of plot and don’t end up giving too much away. But I can safely say I’d recommend it, if for the wide variety of emotions experienced while perusing its pages.