Wickedly Dangerous by Deborah Blake

WICKEDLY DANGEROUS is the start of what could be an exciting new series. The series is based on the Baba Yaga mythology, a supernatural being from Russian lore who's usually a crone who lives in a hut with chicken legs and flies around in a mortar and pestle. Most urban fantasy and paranormal series focus on other supernatural beings so I was very curious to see what someone might do with Baba Yaga. In Blake's world, Baba Yaga is a title, not a single being, and WICKEDLY DANGEROUS is one Baba's story, in this case Barbara Yager. (Such an un-subtle name, I know.) This 21st century Baba Yaga rides a motorcycle instead of a mortar and has an Airstream instead of a hut -- a great modernisation on mythology -- but she's still got a ton of magic and still goes where she's called, doing "favours" in exchange for three impossible tasks.

There's also another side to the mythology, quite literally: the Otherworld. It's a land of magic and mystical creatures. All of the Baba Yaga's answer to the queen of the Otherworld, and many of the Babas guard doors to the Otherworld. Barbara Yager, for example, has a door in her Airstream.

In WICKEDLY DANGEROUS, Baba ends up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, a town with three missing children. Baba immediately hones in on a suspect and the book has a lot of neat ups and downs and Baba faces off with her opponent. Complicating matters is the local sheriff, Liam McClellan. He's one of those incredibly-handsome-with-a-tragic-past types, making him a sympathetic character and also a great romantic interest for Baba. (He's also a complete newcomer to the world of magics so he also serves the very practical purpose of exposition.)

What I liked best about WICKEDLY DANGEROUS, aside from the mythology, are the characters. Baba is so prickly and witchy and delightful! The secondary characters are also great - Day, Sun, and Knight are particularly entertaining, as is Chudo-Yudo, the dragon disguised as a dog who lives with Baba. In the world of animal sidekicks, Chudo-Yudo is up there in the Top Five.

Each book seems to have a different Baba Yaga as the protagonist so I'm very curious to see what happens in the next novel. We get a brief, painful tease of events in the next novel in the epilogue of WICKEDLY DANGEROUS so it should be an interesting new story.

Read an excerpt