Friday, September 26, 2008

Lilith Saintcrow's "Night Shift"

Lilith Saintcrow's books include The Dante Valentine Series, which was featured last year at My Book, The Movie.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to Night Shift, the first book in The Jill Kismet Series, and reported the following:
So I opened up Night Shift to page 99, and found a page that encapsulates the protagonist Jill Kismet's relationship with her Mephistopheles, Perry the hellbreed. I think it's a fair representation of the quality of the book, because on one page we have Perry and Jill's relationship boiled down to essentials--he wants her to turn a little, just a very little, so he can own her. We get to see Jill's upbringing, and a little of what makes her who she is. The whole utility/hate relationship these two have really stands out starkly for me--it's definitely utility/hate, not love/hate.

What fascinates me about Perry and Jill is not a love/hate relationship, because we've all seen that before. What I'm interested in is two characters who hate each other almost as much as they need each other--Jill needs the strength Perry's mark grants to her in her fight against evil; and who knows what Perry wants from her yet? I want to ask the question, "How far can you go down the garden path without losing your soul and becoming like the things you fight?"
Read an excerpt from Night Shift, and learn more about the author and her work at Lilith Saintcrow's website.

--Marshal Zeringue