Welcome to Dim Sum Asylum: a San Francisco where it’s a ho-hum kind of case when a cop has to chase down an enchanted two-foot-tall shrine god statue with an impressive Fu Manchu mustache that's running around Chinatown, trolling sex magic and chaos in its wake.
Senior Inspector Roku MacCormick of the Chinatown Arcane Crimes Division faces a pile of challenges far beyond his human-faerie heritage, snarling dragons guarding C-Town’s multiple gates, and exploding noodle factories. After a case goes sideways, Roku is saddled with Trent Leonard, a new partner he can’t trust, to add to the crime syndicate family he doesn’t want and a spell-casting serial killer he desperately needs to find.
While Roku would rather stay home with Bob the Cat and whiskey himself to sleep, he puts on his badge and gun every day, determined to serve and protect the city he loves. When Chinatown’s dark mystical underworld makes his life hell and the case turns deadly, Trent guards Roku’s back and, if Trent can be believed, his heart... even if from what Roku can see, Trent is as dangerous as the monsters and criminals they’re sworn to bring down.
Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon
Cat gives this one 3 meows 2 purrs...
I have to say I really like this cover. Rhys Ford is one of my favorite authors. Her Cole McGinnis books one of my all time favorite series. This book reminded me a lot of those stories except with a paranormal flair. One thing I didn't like about the story and is not just about this story alone is the big words often used in fantasy and mythological stories and also the words that may even be real Chinese or Asian oriented. I still didn't know what they meant or had a lot of trouble pronouncing causing it to slow the story for me. There is also a lot of description of the china town and scenery that I felt could have been spent on the story.
Having said that, I really did like the story. There was a lot of mystery, some cool characters I did like Roku. I did not read the short story it was from and if I had it may have been even better. The story starts with lots of action, it it fast-paced and has a touch of romance built in.
Having said that, I really did like the story. There was a lot of mystery, some cool characters I did like Roku. I did not read the short story it was from and if I had it may have been even better. The story starts with lots of action, it it fast-paced and has a touch of romance built in.
If you like high fantasy, dragons, Fae, magic and SyFy fast-paced stories with a bit of mystery... you will like this one.
Excerpt...
I HATED running first thing in the morning. Even in a fog-drenched San Francisco when the temperatures were on the colder side, it was too early and too damned hot to be pounding through the narrow sidewalks of Chinatown as merchants set up for a packed farmer’s market. I wasn’t made for long hauls at full speed, which was funny considering my faerie half pretty much should have handed me every stamina advantage. But evolution happened, so there wasn’t any need for a faerie’s wings to carry their body over long distances anymore, and since I didn’t inherit actual wings, I probably hadn’t stood in the genetics line for a fae’s stamina either.
For one of the few times in my life, I wished I’d inherited more of my mother’s fae hollow-bone structure than my father’s build. I could have run faster if I wasn’t built so human. I wouldn’t have said no to a pair of dragonfly wings either, even if they didn’t work. I’d gotten some ancestor’s long legs, and they came in handy to leap over a pile of decaying durian left on the sidewalk. My boot toe brushed one of the fruits, and I briefly wondered if I’d ever get the smell out of the leather as it exploded under the pressure of its rotted meat.
High above me, the gōngyù bridges spanning the streets cast long, hard shadows onto the pavement, the network of tangled arches burdened with the poor’s makeshift villages, resting a disjointed minicity above San Francisco’s tall buildings. Someone in a gōngyù nearby was smoking ducks, the crisp, spicy smell of curing meat settling down to the street below. If my mouth wasn’t already thick with saliva from the overexertion, the smell of roasting fowl would have done me in. I hadn’t eaten anything since a stale donut nearly twelve hours ago, such a typical cop trope, and I’d lived on high-octane coffee ever since I’d swallowed its last crumb.
Thank the Gods for the coffee or I’d have been flat on my face after the first few steps. Although my rage probably would have taken care of me because right at that moment the adrenaline pumping through my blood could have fueled a fleet of ferries across the Bay. I was that angry.
Dodging a stall of dried fish, I rolled over the counter of the next booth, narrowly avoiding a line of bins filled with cuttlefish and rock cod on ice. The stream of Cantonese that followed me wasn’t as hot and angry as the skein of Korean-crested dragons flying in my wake. While the lizards were only the length of a dachshund, there were at least ten of them with mouths filled with long pointy teeth, and they were extremely angry. No matter how small something was, if it had teeth and it was angry, it was something to be reckoned with.
Luckily, I wasn’t the one who’d pissed them off.
The man I was chasing was fat, wearing a badly fitted suit, and smelling of bean burritos. I’d have given up chasing after him if it wasn’t for one thing—eight things: he’d stashed an entire clutch from the crested dragons’ nest in his jacket’s deep pockets.
Above me, the crimson-and-green crested dragons dove past my head. They rode the air in undulating waves, their heads weaving side to side as they gave chase. Most draconian beings, big or small, flew using their wings. But Asiatic lizards’ flight was powered by the pearls in their foreheads, so I didn’t have to worry about being slapped in the head as they flew. I wasn’t even sure if I registered in their tiny little brains.
The odds of the dragons getting to him first were good, but having them actually do something to him was slim. Crested dragons were scavengers down to the bone. I’d seen one run from a live rat one-third its size but then savage a plucked turkey to ribbons after it had been left out for only moments while the cook heated up oil in the deep fryer.
Of course, I’d also never seen them after someone plundered their nests, so I could have it all wrong. For all I knew, they were going to carve him up into tiny jellied slices once they caught up with the egg thief, and I was going to have to fight them off just to make an ID. Whatever happened, Arnett was going to get what was coming to him, and hopefully it wasn’t going to be me pounding his face in because he’d screwed me over.
The early-morning chill made it difficult for the crested dragons to gain speed and altitude. Steady afternoon heat from the city’s streets gave them thermals to ride, and if they’d been a more aggressive species, I’d be looking at Arnett’s picked-over carcass draped with full-bellied, contented frill-headed lizards. Still, they were motivated to get their eggs back, and they buzzed around me, diving up and down above the heads of the morning foot traffic.
After the last wave of Asian immigrants a few years ago, the Chinatown district grew, extending down to Davis. The closed-in sprawl of the historic district migrated. Buildings were packed with entire generations of single families, and the area was difficult to maneuver in, walls moving as more or less space was needed by the inhabitants. I grew up in its sprawl. Arnett had not, and now he was running blind.
“Arnett!” I yelled at his retreating back. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t slow down.
Assholes never slowed down when they were running from the cops. Even if they knew they weren’t going to get away, they still had to try… and Arnett knew better. There wasn’t going to be any end to this scenario that didn’t include him being caught. One way or another, I wasn’t going to let this go. I’d run him into the ground.
The stream of people closed in behind him, moving uphill toward the business centers past Washington. One of the district’s newer gates loomed over me, the large golden dragon on its crossbeam watching the skein carefully as it zipped by. It paid no attention to me. The draconian sentry sat purely for its own reasons, a bargain struck with the Triad Consortium long before the Golden Gate Bridge was built. Its tail swung and wrapped around the thick stone column supporting its perch. The rippling membrane at its end flowered, snapping out, nearly knocking me over. Despite, or perhaps because of, its criminal activity, the Triad knew what it was doing to keep its territories protected. The dragon was massive, a fierce reptilian watchdog mostly satisfied to remain on its post in exchange for a substantial amount of food every week.
So I couldn’t count on its help with Arnett.
Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and was a 2016 LAMBDA finalist with her novel, Murder and Mayhem. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications.
She’s also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? She shares the house with Yoshi, a grumpy tuxedo cat and Tam, a diabetic black pygmy panther, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.
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Thanks for the review & excerpt!
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