Pleasingly cat-like fun: The Highwayman by Hauf

Great Moments from last night's reading

Book: The Highwayman by Michele Hauf

Series: Wicked Games, this is book 1

Page: I'm only to 40 so far

Spoiler level: none

Blurb:

In Michele Hauf's WICKED GAMES miniseries, a match between cat and demon takes on a most delicious spin...

Max Fitzroy, the legendary Highwayman, had slain scores of demons with a razorlike whip and a burning need for revenge. Now, to rid himself of the demon inside him—who'd cursed him with immortality and stolen all sensual pleasures—Max needed a witch's familiar, the one creature he'd made a career of killing.

But the Highwayman wasn't prepared for the familiar named Aby. The sleek and sexy conduit to the demon world saw past his swirling shadow as easily as he scaled the walls she'd erected to protect herself. Max needed Aby to grant him his freedom, and then he needed to slay her. But how could he destroy the only creature he'd desired in centuries?

I'm just starting this novel, which I won from Chris at Stumbling Over Chaos, (and who lives just a few blocks away from me! On my same street!) I'm really enjoying it so much! Things I really like so far:

-The hero, Max, is this doomed loner immortal highwayman who wears a long dark duster and spurs. Sorry, I'm just a sucker for this sort of hero. Max starts out with bad intentions for our heroine Aby: get her to summon a demon, which involves having sex with her, then kill her.

Zoiks! On her fun blog post full of little tidbits about this book, Hauf notes that she has Max driving a Mustang because she wanted "to somehow work in the image of a highwayman riding a horse (mustang; horse; get it?)" There are so many great little details like that here.

- The heroine is a CAT shifter familiar. Well, she hasn't shifted yet, but I'm looking forward to it a great deal. Even as a human character, Aby is pleasingly cat-like. Slinky, curious, a certain coy, bright, alert personality. I've always loved how Kelley Armstrong does wolves, especially in the book Bitten, but as cat person, I'm super happy to see this. I'm really looking forward to more of this cat.

- Cooler still: in the Aby sections, there is a certain subtle cat-like music to the prose. Here is an example (oh, and at the bar she orders cream with a touch of grenadine):

Aby sipped the pale pink cream from the wine goblet. This didn't feel right. She should walk away and find Severo.

And yet, the stranger smelled so interesting. A girl could lose her sense of right and wrong from an enticing scent.

Later:

"I'm retired." Aby turned and, leaning against the wall, offered a forced calmness. It was difficult to be too standoffish when the man was so delicious.

Sex all night with this one?

It could never happened the way she'd like it to go.

Do you hear it? It's in the short sentences and the internal music of the long ones. Maybe it's just my cat-addled brain.

Another tidbit from Hauf's fun blog post: "The heroine started out as a white Persian cat-shifting familiar. Halfway through the book I thought "I so cannot see a fluffy white persian kicking butt" so I switched her to an Abyssinian, which, through research, I learned was a breed that is very chummy with dogs. Worked out perfect because her best friend is a werewolf."

Another cool thing:
-As you see above, our cat shifting heroine, Aby, is friends with Severo, a wolf. There's a cool dog and cat dynamic between the two. I also like when Max, Aby and Severo are onstage together--the evolving dynamics between the three of these characters is already starting to be very interesting. Here, an excerpt, narrated by Max.

The pixie-haired familiar shook her head and slunk against the wolf's side. The mongrel lifted his chin, eyeing Max down the bridge of his nose.

She'd been confident and open earlier, when she had not been in the wolf's presence. Max would get nothing further from her until he could speak to her alone. That is, if he could convince her he had no intention of harming her.

He could lie with the best of them.

I may report back later. Note that the book is only out for a month! Info, excerpts and prologue here. Reviews: You gotta read, Alternative worlds, Darque reviews, anybody else?
Cat images: Tiberius, mine.