SS > book reviews > Phillipa Bornikova

Fresh out of law school, Linnet Ellery has landed a hot job at a competitive and powerful New York White-Fang law firm, where the partners are all vampires and the office politics will suck you dry.

As the new girl, Linnet is assigned to a decades-old case involving a high-profile, werewolf-run security company whose ownership is in doubt. When the company’s founder died, his will vanished, leaving his human family and his werewolf progeny squabbling fruitlessly over his legacy.

But is this just a case of muddled inheritance or are there darker forces at work? When her boss is murdered, Linnet realizes that she’s going to need all her wits—and a strong dose of her usual uncommonly good luck—to find out what’s really going on before she becomes the next target…

Linnet Ellery is human, raised by vampires, now working in a vampire-run law firm. Her colleagues think she got her position because of her vampire connections. And she has been assigned an old case being worked on by the office loser. But Linnet is a good lawyer, tenacious, and very very lucky. So the old case suddenly becomes hot again.

This is a fun, fast-paced romp, with an interesting background, and a protagonist who uses her lawyer smarts, and her surprising luck, to cut a swathe through werewolf antagonists and office politics. The case is closed by the end, but there are enough loose ends back in the office that there’s sure to be more need for Linnet’s luck in future.

What happens when exquisitely beautiful elves start getting all the roles in Hollywood? Human actors sue, that’s what. In a desperate attempt to keep the squabbling inside the Screen Actors Guild from going public, the president of SAG forces the two sides into arbitration.

Enter Linnet Ellery, a human lawyer working for a vampire law firm, to serve as arbitrator. Linnet discovers that sinister forces in Tinsel Town are determined to shatter the fragile peace between elves, vampire, werewolves, and humans. Someone has been coercing famous elves into committing terrible acts of violence against humans—acts that could turn the tide of public opinion against all the supernatural Powers.

Linnet Ellery, human lawyer working in a vampire-run law firm, has been sent off to Hollywood with her boss, to arbitrate between human and elven actors: the humans claim the fey are getting parts through glamour, not talent. But once the case starts, Linnet finds she will need all her implausible luck simply to survive.

This starts off relatively slowly, getting the case set up, but when the action starts, it’s all fast-paced struggle for survival and clever lawyering. There’s more hints of backstory too, and that Linnett is somehow special, not simply lucky.

Knowledge can be a terrible thing…

Linnet has finally found someone who can potentially explain the source of her mysterious power, which may make her the most dangerous human on the planet—someone whose existence would mean the death of every vampire and werewolf in the world.

But before she can worry about being responsible for genocide, John, her elven ex-boyfriend, is still trapped in Fairyland, and Linnet is going to get him out. With the help of her boss, whom she may or may not be falling in love with, she is planning a raid into Fey to take down the Fey Queen who is holding John prisoner.

author : Phillipa Bornikova

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Books : reviews

Phillipa Bornikova.
This Case is Gonna Kill Me.
Tor. 2012

Phillipa Bornikova.
Box Office Poison.
Tor. 2014

Phillipa Bornikova.
Publish and Perish.
Tor. 2018