Laura Anne Gilman, Bring It On

Bring It On, Laura Anne Gilman, Luna, July 2006, $14.95, 304 pp. ISBN 0373802404

Wren Valerie is a Retrieval Artist (some might call her a thief) who is a Talent using a charge of power, many times electrical in nature to use her magic. Her latest case involves Anna Rosen, a Null (a human with no talent) who wants Wren to retrieve a piece of jewelry that is in her stepmother's possession even though it belonged to Anna's mother. She accepts the job without letting her Null business partner and lover Sergei Didier as a way of asserting her independence.

Wren's attention is wrenched away from the job when it looks like the different factions in Manhattan are going to battle. The fatae (magical sentient creatures once though to belong only in fantasy or children's books) are the victim of human hate crimes, lonejacks, independent operators like Wren are disappearing and the fatae doesn't want to join forces with the lonejacks who have ignored them in the past. All factions think the Mage Council is behind the vigilante assaults, the disappearances and the forcible attempts to bring the lonejacks to heel. Wren proposes an alliance between the fatae and the lonejacks and is spearheading the unification believing they must to stand together to survive whatever the Council is planning.

The latest Reviewer novel is an action-packed romantic fantasy in which different factions of the magical community make alliances in preparation for a possible war with the Mage Council. Laura Anne Gilman is in the same League as Laurell K. Hamilton, creating a world where humans, magical beings and Talents all know about each other and sometimes even mange to co-exist peacefully. Ms. Gilman is a great world builder who makes readers desire to believe her world actually exists.

Harriet Klausner