[To be perfectly honest: I got a copy of this book in an Early Reviewer give-away at librarything. I don’t think it’s tainted my judgment, though. It was an ARC, however, so passages quoted might have changed.]

Frost Moon is the first book in the Skindancer series by Anthony Francis.

Plot:
Dakota Frost is a magical tattoo artist. That doesn’t only mean that she’s a damn good inker, it means that her tattoos are actually magic, which is easily noticeable because they move. Her normal life gets disrupted when she gets drawn into a murder investigation because the killer likes to keep those magical tattoos. At the same time, she gets involved into shapeshifter and vampire politics and everything gets pretty damn complicated.

Frost Moon is not necessarily a good book. I mean, it’s okay, it’s decent but objectively, it’s nothing to write home about. At the same time, though, it’s a hell of a lot fun. Dakota is a great character and I really enjoyed the story. It also helps that the author seems to be quite a nerd. That means that  Magic: The Gathering jokes are just sprinkled on top of the whole thing.

I enjoyed Dakota immensly. She’s really tall, she’s tattooed from head to toe, she has a mohawk – and yet, she’s still allowed to be sexy and men are always after her. And she has a pretty big mouth, a lot of feist and she talks dirty – what’s not to love?

Also, she is a lesbian/bisexual/omnisexual/whatever. She has an ex-girlfriend and is constantly going on about the sexy men in her life. [And when I say constantly, I mean almost every guy is really hot and she flirts the hell out of them.] Not that I mind. But it makes paragraphs like this one really, really weird:

Two lesbians kissing for real is nothing like you see in a porno. It’s nothing showy, no flicking tongues or exaggerated heavy breathing. It’s simple and pure and as natural as any man kissing a woman: a moment of attraction, a moment of vulnerability, a moment of pure bliss as lips press against lips and eyes close with bliss.

Yeaaaaah, thanks for clearing that up? Who would have thought that two lesbians kissing is actually like… like two people kissing! It sounds more like the author tried to show how totally not turned on (and how completely PC) he is.

Anyway, the story itself was not very surprising and Francis’ writing style is not perfect. But with a charming heroine and a really nice sense of humour like that, I don’t care. And I loved the whole magical tattoo idea (I already loved it in InterWorld and I will have to read The Illustrated Man pretty soon), though all that talk about mana made me a little uncomfortable. [Yeah, I know, I know. I have no problems with moving tattoos but the mention of esoteric shit makes me shudder; it’s weird. I am aware.]

Summarising: Fun!