Hazen’s polished debut, the first in The Black List urban fantasy series, introduces readers to a delightful Seattle where magic is real and the mysteries are plentiful. Bartender-turned-private-investigator Alex Whittaker, a human, is having a very bad life. She and her powerful Otherkin girlfriend, Maeve, have just broken up; she’s investigating her sister’s disappearance; and now she has to scrape her new, highly unwilling partner, Finnegan Black, out of yet another bar and sober him up. Former police officer Finn is no lover of Otherkin–he blames them for another disappearance, his fiancée’s. Now, thanks to Maeve, he’s saddled with Alex as his new partner/boss, and he couldn’t be more upset. Yet the pair manage to come to a detente when a former coworker of Alex’s goes missing, and a Daemonkin artifact that should never have been in our world escapes.

Crisp prose and fascinating world building set The Black Mark apart. Save for rare instances of an info dump, the peculiarities of this fantastical Seattle and its Otherkin community (the Seattle PD’s occult division employs witches) are teased out as the story unfolds, offering a glimpse into a world much like this one–yet not. Intriguing secondary characters–Nikki and Dr. Hammersmith, in particular–add depth and provide perfect foundations upon which the main characters can develop.

Those leads, though, are promising but less assured in this first volume than the world around them. Both Alex and Finn are flawed, complex people with intricately detailed back stories and motivations. Yet it feels as though some pieces of crucial information are missing–how Alex developed her investigative skills and how Finn deals with his alcoholism, for example. Small hints are dropped about Alex’s background, but a fuller accounting would likely help connect readers more strongly to this intriguing lead. Still, this memorable debut marks the arrival of a strong new voice in the genre.

Takeaway: This promising urban fantasy debut boasts strong world building and promising characters.

Great for fans of: BR Kingsolver, Seana Kelly, Annette Marie.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A