Night Shift: The Jill Kismet Books: Book One [Kindle Edition]

Jill Kismet is a hunter one of a few people who are trained to keep regular humans safe from the darker world of the night side. One evening while patrolling the city she is called to investigate a vicious slaying of five police officers. When she arrives on the carnage she notices a hellbreed scent (hellbreeds are a wide array of demons, half demons or other species escaped or sent from Hell) and a Were scent combined something that is highly unlikely. This begins an investigation that keeps Jill running from one gruesome discovery to another.

Jill is a flawed individual who has had a tramatic life thus far. From the early pages or really right through out the book Jill is at times, clinging to her sanity by her blood encrusted finger tips. Saul is the love interest in this book and it is interesting to read how Jill or Kiss as she is sometimes known, lets down her inner defences to allow someone to get closer to her. To allow herself to trust someone and dare I say it start to care and fall in love.

I have not read a Lilith Saintcrow novel before. I have seen that she has written the Dante Valentine Series, which have received good reviews. I found that this novel has not let her down. Night Shift was a good and highly entertaining book. If you liked the early Anita Blake books I am sure that you will also enjoy Jill Kismet and her tough as nails attitude. Night Shift has gone back on my read pile to be re-read at a later date. I have pre-ordered the next in the series and am looking forward to reading the continuation in Jill's life.

Some book writers are novelists and some are story tellers.

Lilith Saintcrow (a name which, somehow, I can't find it in myself to take very seriously) is a born story teller who suffers under the delusion that she (he?) might also be a novelist. This is made amply clear by the regular haltings of the story for flashbacks to protagonist Jill Kismet's (another ulikely name) unhappy past, to her self-loathing, to her drippy religiosity and to her just plain generalized kvetching. None of these little italicized episodes is very interesting or even especially successful in any other way, so you might as well skip over them.

What merit the book possesses is to be found in the story telling. Author Saintcrow takes us on a fast, bumpy ride through a variant on the Buffyverse--and not a very variant one at that. Jill Kismet is a slightly older, much coarser Buffy. Jill had a much less pleasant childhood and she seems utterly to lack Buffy's talent for accumulating friends.

As fictional worlds in hiding just around the corner from our own familiar surroundings go, Kismet's universe really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And I give Saintcrow heavy credit for this, she doesn't seem to give a hoot about any of its logical failings. Jill Kismet's world is full of powerful entities such as "hellbreeds" (i.e. demons) and "weres" (i.e. shape changers) who look and act just like urban lowlifes--as they might be imagined by yuppie suburbanites, that is.

Saintcrow's insouciance with regard to the "weres" actually becomes rather amusing as the book rolls on.... First, she appears to be unaware that the word "were" as in "werewolf" is the Old English "wer," a cognate of the Celtic "fir" and the Latin "virum," all of which mean simply "man," so that a "werewolf" is literally a "man-wolf." She applies to her "weres" the social relationships of some but by no means all predatory pack animals, but she also has them living on "reservations." Her "weres" are terse of speech, darkly handsome, physically competent, stolidly noble and otherwise generally described in such ways as to make me believe that the author has never so much as met an inhabitant of any real reservation, such as the one six blocks from my house.

And, of course, her "weres" are not mere wolves in human shapes--oh, heavens no, they come in tribes: cats, canines, birds, snakes and spiders. This last, in particular, is a delightfully lunatic notion that provides one of the highlights of the book.

The strength of "Night Shift" lies in its ability to make the reader wonder what is coming on the next page. You can't get ahead of this author because her story does not have any significant line of logical progression. It starts, it veers and swerves all over the place, then it ends. And, what the heck, if the final payoff is not really commensurate with the build-up, well, who cares? It's the ride that's fun, not the destination.

By any objective standards, this is a three-star book--not bad, not especially good. On the other hand, if you are willing to ignore your logical filters and just go with the rush, you might find four stars more appropriate. Read more ›

I only discovered this author recently and I completely love all the books I've read. Yes, there are similarities in them but that's a good thing if you really like the style. They are very escapist books and are quite dark but still with humour. Having re-watched Buffy videos too many times these books are the next best thing! I've also started reading Yasmine Gallenorn which I think are similar and also good (but not quite as good!).

As a Danny Valentine follower, I approached this with caution - Danny got so miserable as the books progressed, I wondered if Ms Saintcrow was capable of writing anything light.
This definitely has its darker moments, but also lighter ones. Oh for a male were around the home - I loved the idea of him doing all the housework and cooking, and laundry, in fact I pretty much loved the idea of Saul altogether! Jill is indeed a lass troubled by her past - both long past and more recent, but she isn't alone - she has friends, both human and were and other who rate her. There's a lot more to learn about her life, the weres sound a fine race, what with their looks and their lithe movements, and Perry... Well, he's a nasty piece of lowlife, but what's he after?
I shall read on, and recommend this, it's well worth the read.

I was disappointed in this book, primarily because about a chapter into it I realised that Jill Kismet was pretty much a clone of Dante Valentine, and moved in a very similar world performing very similar deeds.

The frame of mind was pretty much indistinguishible between the two, and consisted of mostly a kind of paranoid hyperbolic headless chicken run. I yearned for poor Jill to stop and think for five minutes, but every time it seemed like my wish just may be granted, tantalisingly Jill would be interrupted, and spouting some machismo remark, run off into another brainless conandrum.

Reading this book was really frustrating because although Saintcrow writes really well, unfortunately the plotting disappoints and the characterisation is a plagiarism (if one can plagiarise oneself) of previous work.

Alas, I look forward to Saintcrow excelling herelf but this is not it.