Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Dave Butler's "Crow Jane"...A Book Review

13455448*

I've known about Dave Butler's Rock Band Fights Evil series for some time. It's only recently I got around to reading it.

Now I'm asking myself, what took me so long?

The books in this series are fun. They're not too gory or gratuitous. The stories are quick reads, not simple, but singularly focused. Book 3 is called Crow Jane and it's a little different from the previous installments, Hellhound On My Trail, and Snake Handlin' Man. Those stories focus mostly on the band, a group of cursed musicians (some think all musicians are "cursed"...) destined to roam the land playing gigs in seedy bars and fighting the forces of evil.

This one, however, focuses on someone else, a marked woman who has lived since the dawn of humanity, or the Biblical timeline of humanity. I loved it! I loved getting to know Jane, or Qayne, as she was once known. Butler weaves her story masterfully into the modern-day tale. We travel back in time to find out more about Jane, how she became "marked," and how those decisions made millennia ago still reverberate today. She's also an anti-hero we can root for. When Jane and the band meet, each side fights for what they need to survive, and the epic battle is full of twists, magic, and even fire sword-wielding giants. It's quite a ride! And the cover art is killer, too, done by the very talented Carter Reid.

There's monsters and devils, angels and faeries, magical spells and flesh-eating horses. It's the kind of story that could be made into a weekly television series where we enter a world full of imaginative characters and situations. In Crow Jane, we get a better glimpse into one of the evil beings the band has been fighting.

There are more books in the series. I've got one on my Kindle right now. I'll let you know how that one turns out, too.

* Photo used without permission from: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13455448-crow-jane

1 comment: