Revenant by Phaedra Weldon

Whew! This one is just all over the place! Someone is killing revenants, aka The Firstborn, aka vampires. The Firstborn were created by the first Phantasm to be his loving children, but something went wrong, and they've been hiding out for centuries (millenia, perhaps) by occupying the bodies of humans, needing to drink human blood every so often to maintain their unnatural state. The person responsible has discovered a partial spell that is intended to destroy them completely, but the missing piece leaves their essence/soul trapped within the decaying bodies, and one of the eldest revenants recruits Zoe to dispatch the soul of one of her ghouls (sorta like a human servant in other vampire lore).

Seems like every other chapter, we learn that one or the other of the characters in the books is not exactly who they seem to be, with some being possessed by revenants or other abysmal entities, and others just turning out to have hidden all-to-human agendas at cross purposes with Zoe and her allies. In the middle of Zoe's problems, her old boyfriend, Daniel, escapes from the psychiatric hospital, and she has to keep an eye out for him - he may still want to murder her.

We do find out a lot about the history of the Firstborn and the Phantasms Mark I and II, and delve a little deeper into the workings of the Society. Ultimately, though, this book is confusing and unnecessarily complicated.

Phantasm by Phaedra Weldon

I've been puttering along, enjoying this series bit by bit, until I bit into Phantasm. I found it confusing, with many twists inserted into the plot, for no apparent reason, and it turned into a bit of soap opera.

For example, Zoe has had a serious relationship building with Detective Daniel for the first two books, but he got seriously freaked out at the end of Spectre when he saw her, in her Wraith incarnation, releasing the ghost of a murdered policeman. Instead of dealing with this in a constructive fashion, Zoe and Daniel don't communicate at all, and she flirts with former undercover cop, Joe, who is a bit more sanguine about the supernatural, and then ends up having wild monkey sex with Dags (Darren) after a death-defying battle scene. Joe and Rhonda are apparently living (and sleeping?) together, but Rhonda has been in love with Dags all along, and Zoe's impulsive behavior sends all of the gang's personal relationships into a death spiral.

Various factions within the spiritual community are constantly trying to kill, capture, suborn, or influence Zoe in one way or another, and her erstwhile enemies become allies, for a time, then enemies again...It's just too much crazy stuff going on for me to follow.

Near the end, when Daniel has been driven insane by being overshadowed by The Horror (the main bogey man in this book), he ends up killing his supervisor in a street shootout, though Zoe was his real target, as he's become convinced that she's the devil incarnate. At that point, Zoe and TC (the spirit entity that's caused her so much grief from the beginning) team up to wipe Daniel's memories, so he will no longer remember what she has done. If they could do this, why didn't they do it right after they found out he was confined in a mental institution for his paranoia? Too much semi-convenient discovery of new abilities.

Deeply flawed, it leaves me wondering whether I'll bother reading the next book, Revenant.

Spectre by Phaedra Weldon

The second novel in the Zoe Martinique Investigations series seems just slightly less dark than the first one. Zoe has mostly recovered from her adventures in becoming a Wraith, aside from having lost her voice completely, though she's picked up enough sign language to compensate for it, mostly. She's become romantically involved with Detective Daniel Frasier, but between the injuries he sustained in the last battle and his innately chivalrous nature, they haven't consummated their attraction yet.

Her mysterious client, Maharba, contacts Zoe with a "make-up" assignment, sending her to a political fundraiser for Congressman March Knowles, asking her to listen in on any meetings he might have with a certain businessman (very similar to her first troublesome assignment for Maharba). Fortuitously, Daniel is also attending the fundraiser, to keep an eye on things for the Atlanta PD, so she gets all prettied up and it looks for a bit as if she might have a lovely night on the town with her beau.

Unfortunately, when she goes out of body to listen in on the meeting, a woman is murdered in the restroom where she's left her body resting, and things begin to be complicated.

There are a couple of magic-using factions that are vying for power, and they've begun a cycle of violence aimed at possessing for their sides five objects of power called Eidolons, which have been secretly held by five different astral travelers for decades. Zoe and Daniel, and an undercover detective named Joe, who was coincidentally the same person who helped Zoe revive after she ended up on a slab in the morgue in Wraith, must try to unravel the plots and counterplots.

Zoe gains a few new mystical abilities, finds out more than she bargained for about her family and friends, and remains sexually frustrated to the bitter end. Still a fun series.

Wraith by Phaedra Weldon

This looked like an interesting new author to try out. It's the first book in the Zoe Martinique Investigation series. Weldon does something just a little different as far as contemporary urban fantasy goes. Zoe is a fledgling private investigator, who advertises on the Internet for her services, and who does her investigations by astral projection; she is able to leave her body for a few hours and spy on things going on in the world around her.

While snooping for a client on his dot-com employers to see if they intend to fire him, Zoe stumbles into something more serious going on nearby. Following her "nose" she witnesses a murder taking place. A Vin Diesel lookalike in a trench coat puts a bullet in the head of an oriental man, and then "eats" his soul. Zoe manages to escape by rapidly returning to her body, but not before the guy, whom she nicknames "TC", grabs her by the astral arm and leaves a black hand print, like a tattoo, around her forearm.

Zoe's mother is some sort of sensitive, and owns a shop in an old Victorian house in Atlanta which has a couple of resident gay ghosts, Tim and Steve. Rhonda, a friend of the family, is a bit of an expert in paranormal matters. Zoe tells them some of what happened to her, and even though they urge her to stay out of the matter, she can't help herself, and decides to go out of body again to find out what's happening after she sees more about Tanaka's murder in the news.

She finds her way to the murdered man's boss, Hirokumi's office, and eavesdrops on a meeting between him and the detective on the case, Lieutenant Frasier. Hirokumi is mixed up in the spooky aspects of the case, and attempts to warn Frasier away without coming right out and saying it was a supernatural being that killed his employee. Hirokumi's personal assistant, Mitsuri, is also more than she appears, and she detects Zoe's presence at the meeting, attempting to trap her astral projection within a charmed Chinese dragon. Zoe escapes again, narrowly.

Zoe finds herself attracted to young Lieutenant Frasier, and once again despite her family and friends' warnings, goes astral to snoop on the detective. She finds him in a bar talking with the bartender and listens in for a while, but suddenly discovers that her encounter with "TC" has given her a new ability, she becomes corporeal, even though her real body is back home. She has a short conversation with Frasier, but flees when he sees the "bruise" on her arm and thinks she's been battered and tries to suggest help.

This novel just goes on and on with twists and turns and unexpected guests, and Weldon really sets the scene for further adventures (looks like there's a couple out already) with Zoe. It's a bit dark, and Zoe's stubborness and tendency to bull on into things she should have avoided are a little trying at times, but I think the series will continue to be fun. They're definitely something different than the usual vampire, were, and fairy fare.