LICENSE TO ENSORCELL – Katharine Kerr
A Nola O'Grady Novel
DAW
ISBN: 978-0-7564-0656-1
February 2011
Fantasy

San Francisco , California – Present Day

Nola O'Grady has many unusual talents, which is why she is a valuable employee of The Agency. Instead of a regular work day, patrolling the city on Chaos watch, she has been assigned to help a representative from Interpol on an intriguing case. But this is no ordinary murder investigation, and definitely no ordinary murderer—it could very well be the man who shot her brother years ago.

Ari Nathan is used to hard facts and traditional means of investigation, not the magic and psychic tools Nola uses. But when Nola continues to produce solid results, Ari quickly becomes a believer. The voice of reason and reality, Ari is Nola's link to the police doing the regular footwork, as well as a strict task master when it comes to regular meals. The two opposites must find a way to work together to stop the murderer and keep Chaos from taking over.

LICENSE TO ENSORCELL features an unfortunate disconnect with the main character, possibly because she uses a lot of jargon that the reader doesn't fully understand. Each Agency term is defined once or twice, and readers can check back to the handy Agency reference guide in the back of the book, but the overabundance of terms slows down the reading process and can get confusing.

That said, LICENSE TO ENSORCELL takes place in a fascinating world where Chaos and Harmony, and the agents for both, are constantly battling for control. Both Nola and Ari work well together as partners, and their abilities complement each other. While there are a lot of players to keep track of, each supporting character adds a little something extra to the story.

LICENSE TO ENSORCELL will be followed in August of 2011 with the second novel, WATER TO BURN.

Amanda Toth