Working For The Devil by Lilith Saintcrow

I finished Working For The Devil by Lilith Saintcrow yesterday. I came by this book in a little bit of a roundabout way. Richelle Mead mentioned Lilith's upcoming YA book Strange Angels, and it sounded good so I looked in to the author a bit more and decided to try the Dante Valentine series. It was a good decision!

"Dante Valentine's working relationship with the Devil wasn't her choice - but you don't turn down a contract with Lucifer and live. Hired to kill fugitive Vardimal Santino, Dante's only allies are a demon familiar she doesn't trust and a small band of psychics. The thing is, Dante doesn't need friends, she needs a miracle. Because the first time Dante Valentine met Santino, she almost died."

This series is set somewhere in the future, with much advanced technology and a lot of magic. But the author is clever in not bogging the books down with explanations of all the technology. It's just there, with enough told about it so you know what it does, but a lot is left to your own imagination, allowing the story to be told without long descriptive sections.

Dante, or Danny as she's known to her friends, is someone who is struggling with her past. in particular the death of a very close friend of hers, Doreen, who was killed by Santino several years before. Doreen died saving Dante, so Dante feels she owes her. But if she dies in the process, she doesn't seem to care a whole lot. She is someone full of pain, and ending all that isn't something she's completely against.

Dante is a Necromance, who works as a Mercenary as well, when she's disturbed by a knock at her front door and opens it to find a demon pointing a gun at her head. Reluctantly she follows him in to Hell itself to speak to Lucifer. The demon, Japhrimel, is given to her as a 'familiar', his job is to protect her and keep her alive so she can do as asked, and kill Santino. They start off with a mutual hatred for each other, and Dante hating his kind, in other words, all demons. But working together changes things.

The story moves at a good pace, throwing a few surprises in along the way. There are various different 'types' of people in this, Skinlins, Shamans and others as well as different levels of powers. But again, there isn't masses of information on them thrown at you at once, little bits are revealed here and there, allowing you to take it all in and keep the differences separate, without feeling like you need to know a lot more to understand them.

I really enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.