Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121217 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

OSI means Occult Special Investigator
Welcome to the world of Tess and her best friend Derrick they both work for the Central Occult Regulation Enterprise or CORE for short. Tess is a OSI - Occult Special Investigator just like a CSI but for the supernatural world of Demons and Mages. This world is set in our world. The story starts out with the death of a vampire in a alley way and the CORE are called in to investigate. So begins a good story beginning with the death of a vampire which leads to Mia a 13 year old girl in need of protection. Tess makes the decision to risk her career in order to protect Mia and so embarks on a superantual conspiracy. Chasing down one of her leads Tess interviews Lucian (yum) a necromancer who become part of the story.

I really enjoyed this story and will be buying the sequel?. The only grip I have about this book is that sometimes the story can ramble on about the technical aspect of what they are investigating. Once or twice not often I felt like saying JUST GET ON WITH IT. Hence the four stars. Otherwise a really good book. If you are into urban fantasy with a sassy flawed lead character, magic, vampires, and trusty side kick Derrick (who you can not help but like) then you will enjoy Night Child.

Great start for a new urban fantasy series - paranormal CSI
I realy enjoyed this first novel in what appears to be a new urban fantasy series, by a Canadian author, set in Vancouver. That the author is Canadian is significant for British readers as there is something much more akin to British humour than is found in American books - perhaps the sense of irony? Anyway, we meet Tess and side-kick Derrick who work as Occult Special Investigators investigating the death of a vampire. Both Tess (haunted by dreams of fire when she failed to save a childhood friend) and Derrick (the more cerebral and gay) are well thought out characters, both very credible and are both only half human with a demon parent as well. Their relationship with the 13-year old girl, Mia, is at the centre of the investigation into a paranormal conspiracy and is gradually developed with both pathos and humour. Vancouver is also lovingly protrayed with some magical differences. With some great one-line jokes and a developing relationship between Tess and necromancer Lucian, I very much look forward to a second outing (!) of these characters.

A Fantastic Debut
Night Child is the debut novel from author Jes Battis and it focuses on Tess Corday, and OSI-1 investigator who stumbles into a mysterious case involving a dead vampire and a teenage girl named Mia. I think the best way to describe this novel is think Buffy, the Vampire Slayer/Charmed meets CSI with a dark twist.

The main character, Tess Corday is actually a very likable, first person narrator. I have found that quite often it is difficult to like the main character in a first person novel, but here Tess is a fun, feisty, relateable character whose tenancy to act first and think later is all part of her charm. We get the story through her eyes, so one of the most likable characters in the novel is her best friend and college Derrick who takes on the sidekick role and often gets some of the best lines his relationship with Tess is a fun, deep and trusting friendship. We also have other characters such as Lucian a necromancer who Tess is drawn to, Selena Tess' boss/teacher who I found to be another extremely likable character and Marcus the big boss who isn't the friendliest of people towards Tess.

The story itself has a good few twists and turns, the story is well developed and well thought out and the main twist at the end was surprising in some ways, but in others I managed to figure out what was going on as the book progressed. Battis makes good use of mythology, often exploring different supernatural elements such as scyring, glamouring, telepathy as well as having a whole cast of characters with special powers and different supernatural beings such as mages, vampires and necromancers.

I picked this novel up after wanting to read it for quite some time, and although it did take me a while to get into it - likely due to the amount of technical babble that the author has chosen to include, once I got about half way through I couldn't put it down until I finished, in fact I think I read the last third of it in one sitting almost. But there is, as I said quite a lot of technical language relating to forensics and that side of the novel, which I can't make my mind up over if I think it helped the novel or not. I think what makes the novel different is the inclusion of all the forensics language, so it kind of makes the supernatural side of the story fit better into the real world because it creates scientific explanations of what is going on and obviously it is all fantasy, but Battis does a good job of making it sound "real". The writing is top notch, there are a lot of pop culture references, perhaps a few too many sometimes but it's all part of the tone of the book and again, makes you think of Buffy.

One thing that did bother me slightly was the ending, there seemed to be a lack of closure for such a well thought out, well researched and well written novel. The story kind of just stopped, I would have liked to have seen what happened after the action stopped and the villains were defeated, I don't know maybe we'll find out in the next book but it would have been nice to have been left with a sense of closure. This is probably one of my only major complaints about the novel, because other than the fairly abrupt ending the story was great.

Overall, this is a decent debut novel and I will be picking up the sequel A Flash of Hex when it is released later in the year. Hopefully by then Battis will have perfected the balance between supernatural, fantasy and technical jargon because here the technical language does seem to take over the main narrative from time to time but this is still an interesting and entertaining read for fans of the urban fantasy genre.