I'm working on a Keeper's Chronicles online RPG, so I had to reread through the series this weekend. Ergo, you get a review! Woo!
I always have a whole lot of fun reading this series, which features people descended from Lilith (approximately) that are able to use magic and end up spending their time monitoring and patching holes in the fabric of reality. Cousins are the monitors, Keepers are the site-sealers. (For more information, check the RPG link, as I've been typing up shitloads of quotes about it.)
In StK, Keeper Claire Hansen crashes at a ratty B&B, the Elysian Fields Guest House ("Why don't you just call it the Vestibule of Hell?"), overnight while waiting to get to the place where she's been Summoned to deal with a site. When she wakes up, she finds that she's at where she was intended to be, the grouchy old man running the place was a Cousin, and he's left her the house and buggered off. Leaving her to monitor a site where an evil Keeper lies asleep and a hole to Hell has been opened up and seeping since World War 2. Claire, who's more of a take-charge, no-compromise, fix-it-now girl, is unhappy about not being able to shut it down right off the bat, and fears that like most elderly Keepers, she'll be stuck monitoring the site with her talking cat, Austin, forever.
There are, however, compensations. Such as the hunky, Clark-Kent-in-an-apron, 20-year-old caretaker Dean, and a French ghost named Jacques that haunts the place. Not to mention odd guests and an interesting elevator. Course, what does a Keeper do when one of the available men is dead (even if she can ahem, give him flesh for sexual purposes) and the other is (a) too young, and (b) a Bystander who really shouldn't be knowing about this stuff anyway?
While Claire's stuck dealing with magical issues on a day-to-day level, you'd think this would mean that the plot's kinda dull. Nope, somehow it stays interesting no matter what. Of course, the guests certainly liven the joint up, and one can't help but get a laugh at the snarkiness, the way magic works, and Austin. A fun read.
Posted by Jenmoon at July 14, 2003 09:43 AM