Rating: 2.5 stars
Kit Colbana is a mercenary, who will work as a thief, investigator or even hired killer, if the pay is good. She's a half-breed (her mother's family are some sort of Amazon-like species who can turn invisible at will, and summon their favourite weapon to them by just thinking hard), rejected by her relatives. She keeps having vivid dreams where the local vampire bigwig invades, and tries to sway her to work for him/most likely become his new chew toy, and she's generally not doing super great. Then the dangerously mentally unstable Alpha of the local Cat shifters hires her to locate her missing nephew. Along for the ride until she finds the boy, is the Alpha's sexy lieutenant, who will stay with her 24-7. If Kit succeeds, she'll be paid handsomely. If she fails, she will die.
While investigating, Kit discovers a whole slew of other missing teens. Humans, other shifters, witches. Witnesses remember a van, so it's quite clear that someone is kidnapping them. For what purpose?
J.C. Daniels is a pseudonym for the romance/paranormal author Shiloh Walker. She writes so prolifically that she has to publish books under multiple names. I saw Blade Song highly recommended on a number of review pages I follow, and figured it would be a good late summer read, especially when I was a bit burned out after all my Cannonballing. It turned out to be mostly annoying. While readers on my blog know that I read a LOT of paranormals, this one just didn't grab me. I didn't really care much about Kit as a character, despite her unusual (at least in paranormal fantasy) background and lousy family relations. Her relatives certainly made sure her life was hell growing up, but I need to actually emotionally engage with a character to be affected by these things.
Then there was Damon, the love interest. SPOILER! He starts out by choking her so hard she has visible bruises, even with her advanced healing abilities, and her voice is affected because he squeezed her windpipe so hard. He's full of remorse later, blah blah blah, needed to make his alpha believe he didn't like Kit, she's his chosen mate, all that crap. I don't care if he's the hottest thing since lava and very conflicted because his alpha is a grade A beyotch, I can't really believe in any sort of romantic development between characters with this brand of twisted "meet cute". Just doesn't do it for me. Certainly not when it progresses as quickly as it did in this book. Maybe if it had been months or even a year down the line, and Damon did a whole bunch of things to atone for the fact that he nearly KILLED Kit - but that's not the case.
There's banter, romantic tension, investigations, witches, vampires, shapeshifters, advanced skills with various weapons. I finished the book mainly to see when it got so exciting that these other internet bloggers squeed excitedly about it and recommended it to all and sundry. I do appreciate that Daniels/Walker has some touches you don't usually see in paranormals, it's always nice with variation in a genre that can get a bit samey. Even with my theory that you nowadays have to read at least two or three paranormals in a series to really get an idea if it's something worth spending your time on, I can't invest in this series. The Colbana Files will not be added to my future reading list, one book was enough.
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