Feast’s Famine by Debra Dunbar

I really enjoy all of Debra Dunbar’s works.  She has a unique voice.  I don’t think any of the characters from any of her series would have occurred to me in a million years, but they work.  There are 2 main series that she writes and they are completely different worlds.  Her Imp world series follows the bizarre and sometimes slightly bad but always hilarious life of Samantha Martin, a low level imp from hell who just wants to slip under the radar and somehow manages to attract the attention of the archangels and end up in charge of Hell.  And yeah that sentence was as bizarre as it sounded.  That would ends up incorporating all kinds of other creatures, from elves who decided to live in hell after the big war, to nephilim (children of an angel and a human and totally illegal) to vampires.  And so there are a few spin-offs from that world, and all are worth a read.  I promise you will laugh at things that make no sense outside of the context of the story-I learned that the hard way.  I tried to share a couple of quotes with people and got horrified looks.  SO, I just recommend the books now, I don’t even try to explain them.  But that is only one of the series Debra writes.  

SO on, to the second series, which Feast’s Famine is the 4th book of.  This is the Templar series, and much like the Imp series they revolve around a young woman heroine.  These books revolve around  Solaria Ainsworth, who was raised in a family of Knights Templar.  The Knights Templar are holy warriors, blessed by god to protect the temple, its artifacts and the pilgrims on the path to salvation.  And they have done this for a long time and built up huge libraries of vast knowledge and they are bound to help all those who seek them out.  They have grown rich by protecting and preserving their charges.  And Solaria has been raised to become a knight, which means that she has been trained in swords and fighting in all styles.  But when it comes, time to take her place among the others, she balks.  And ends up living in Baltimore, working in a coffee shop.  And through a series of events, ends up involved with mages and vampires and all kinds of supernatural craziness and LARPing too!  Solaria ends up becoming the Templar protecting the city of Baltimore in her spare time and involved with the vampires too!

Feast’s Famine is the fourth book in the series and delivers the same pace of crazy events.  It opens with a medieval tournament and speeds along from there.  There is a disease demon in Baltimore and he’s created a unique disease along with all the usual suspects, including the Black Plague.  This disease causes a person to have insatiable hunger.  And the group of humans that have been infected are willing blood donors to the vampires, and this virus can infect the vampires too! And vampires with insatiable hunger could cut quite a swath across a modern city.  

This creates an urgency to Aria’s investigation.  And it doesn’t help that she has finally crossed the line into an inter species sexual relationship with Dario, a powerful vampire.  It’s a fun read and a great addition to the series!