Princess of Wands (Princess of Wands Series #1) » (Reprint)

John Ringo is author of the New York Times best-selling series known by most at ?The Posleen Wars? comprising A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front, When the Devil Dances, Hell's Faire, and Calley's War. He also co-authored—with David Weber—March Upcountry, March to the Sea, March to the Stars and We Few in the Prince Roger series. He had visited 23 countries by the time he graduated high school. A veteran of the 82nd Airborne, he brings first-hand knowledge of military operations to his fiction.

Special: distinguished by some unusual quality . . .

Circumstances: a piece of evidence that indicates the probability or improbability of an event . . .

Barbara Everette, homemaker living in a small town in Mississippi, had the perfect life. Perfect husband, perfect children, perfect house, perfect Christian Faith. She cooked and cleaned perfectly and managed all of the chores of the modern suburbanite, toting the kids, running the PTA, teaching kung-fu in the local dojo . . . perfectly. But perfection has a price and the day came when Barbara snapped. She simply had to have "one weekend off." God had to grant her that much. It said no where that she was a slave. Waving goodbye to her hapless, entirely undomestic husband, she set out on the quest for a weekend of peace and maybe some authentic Cajun food.

Detective Sergeant Kelly Lockhart, New Orleans Homicide, had a perfect record on his latest case: not a single suspect. And there should be at least five or six, given the DNA traces on the many bodies. Furthermore, his sole really outstanding clue, a mysterious fish scale, had disappeared into the recesses of the FBI Crime Lab. But the old fortune-teller was sending him into the bayou, down in the land of authentic Cajun food, on the track of a mysterious pimp with the admonition to "watch for the Princess." Or die. Barbara and Kelly were heading to a rendezvous that might be fate and might reveal the hand of God. There was more cooking in the swamps than jambalaya. Unknown to either, the mystery of the Bayou Ripper had Special Circumstances.

Publishers Weekly

Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans will appreciate Barbara Everett, a Mississippi soccer mom who discovers in Ringo's latest, which is less a novel than three linked episodes, that there are things undreamed of in the PTA handbook. In part one, Barbara's ability to take care of an alien infestation straight out of H.P. Lovecraft's "Shadow over Innsmouth" brings her to the attention of a shadowy group that assists the FBI in supernatural cases. They recruit her for a spiritual SWAT team that deals with what secular authorities cannot. As in Ghost (2005), another three-parter, Ringo explores the paradox of using violence against evil: it's necessary, but it can change the fighter into what she fights if she lacks a strong enough moral compass. Ringo portrays his heroine's strong Christian faith sympathetically without being preachy. The second and longest episode, a roman clef about a necromancer slaying attendees at a science fiction convention, will chiefly delight those in on the joke. In the brief third episode, Barbara confronts an evil that strikes close to home and discovers how puny Darkness's tools really are compared to those of Light. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.