Review - Hell Cop 2 by Astrid Amara et al

Hell Cop 2 by Astrid Amara, Nicole Kimberling, and Ginn Hale is a collection of three m/m paranormal novellas that takes place one year after the events of the first Hell Cop collection. It builds upon the characters and situations that we first encountered in the world of Parmas City.

In this sophisticated metropolis, which contains portals to various demonic dimensions, the citizens include sorcerers who are captains of industry and their decadent families, and the hell cops themselves who protect the population from supernatural crime. The most fascinating citizens are the demons who exist at various levels of servitude and who suffer commercial exploitation throughout this ruthlessly capitalistic society. Readers, you're in for a treat. The first Hell Cop collection was good, and this one is significantly better.

Trust Me by Astrid Amara is a 109-page novella that has some scorching hot sex scenes at a 5 on the much consulted 1 to 5 sex-scene scale. It's told from the close, alternating third-person viewpoints of our two heroes, hell cops Brian Day and Jay Yervant. Back in the first Hell Cop collection, Brian was an innocent raised on a supernatural-free commune who came to Parmas City to seek his origins.

Now he's a rookie cop who has a special ability: he is an "osmotic". He can absorb powers, draining them from his target and then using them as his own. Unfortunately, he is becoming a danger to everyone around him including his lover Jay who also has a unique ability: he channels fire and heat throughout his body.

Back in the first Hell Cop collection, Jay had never had an opportunity for physical closeness in his life because he could never touch a person without causing injury. Then he met Brian who could absorb his power and not be affected. But now Brian's osmotic ability is growing unchecked and getting out of control.

Jay wants Brian to sign up for counseling and learn to control his osmotic ability. Brian refuses to admit how serious the problem is. Meanwhile, a twisty and satisfyingly complex mystery kicks off when several homicides occur in a telltale pattern that suggests osmotic ability. Someone is trying to frame Brian, but why?

This is an excellent novella that improves on the one in the first Hell Cop collection, which was also good. Here, Brian and Jay are more complex and interesting. Brian especially has evolved from a sweet, naïve type to a battle-scarred adult who must handle prejudice and suspicion from his fellow cops. Jay, who used to be an isolated cynic, now gets the opportunity to show his caring and compassionate side as he works to save his and Brian's relationship. Meanwhile, the plot twists are surprising and the otherworldly stuff (such as the fabulous barge-bison) is very creative.

Dark Waters by Nicole Kimberling is a 66-page novelette offering sex scenes at a 3 on the 1-to-5 scale. It is told in the single, close, third-person viewpoint of Michael Gold who is a demon-hybrid college professor whose academic specialty is demon anthropology. He is in a relationship with the enigmatic hell cop Dion Argent.

Michael's main demonic power is telepathy, which he uses to communicate with Argent. However, he still can't read Argent's mind as he can with most people because Argent's undercover training and secretive nature prevent him.

The story opens when Michael and Argent go to a semi-aquatic trailer park in a rural community outside Parmas City. The trailer park houses two communities of demons who co-exist in mutual hostility: the fauns and the Baramans who are water creatures.

Michael has accepted an invitation from one of his faun students Vaughn to document a faun religious ceremony. This ceremony involves the ingestion of a lot of drugs and happens on the equinox. Vaughn is an up-and-coming star on the bicycle-racing circuit and doesn't have much interest in the ceremony personally.

However, the more Michael and Argent observe the ceremony and the rising tensions between the two groups of tenants, the more convinced they are that something sinister is going on. Meanwhile, they must navigate some tension within their own relationship given that they have such different outlooks: suspicious cop-mindset and humanities-professor idealism. This novella features the deadpan humor of contrasts (the outré with the mundane) that I here at Obsidianbookshelf.com found so memorable in the first Hell Cop collection.

Such Heights by Ginn Hale is a 91-page novella that features sex scenes at a 3 on the 1-to-5 sex scene scale. It is told from the alternating, close third-person viewpoints of our two heroes after intrepid crime-reporter James Sparks has broken off his relationship with hell cop Ben Morgan.

The two have argued before about the increasing risk involved in James's investigative work. Of course Morgan's career is perilous as well, but he sees himself as older, tougher, and trained for combat.

Plus, he has the definite advantage of magical powers whereas James is only human with no powers. Even so, James is a fiercely independent person who resents Morgan's somewhat condescending attempts to curb his career and protect him.

The story opens with James in a floating magical city known as the Storm Palace. It is a privately owned community that is currently traveling through the airspace of Parmas City while it seeks official designation as a wildlife preserve for the fabulous phoenix birds that nest in its special sanctuary.

However, James witnesses a man fall to his death miles below as several phoenixes frantically circle him, trying to hold him up. When James tries to report this incident to the creepy rich man who owns the Storm Palace, everyone stonewalls him and tries to shut him up. For his own protection, he pretends to drop the subject while continuing to poke around for answers.

Meanwhile, when the body falls to earth, accompanied by a fiercely protective phoenix, the hell cops must solve the homicide. Morgan gets the case and goes undercover on his own to Storm Palace. There, he and James meet again and struggle to work together while still harboring resentment over their break-up. Can they solve the otherworldly mystery and work out their own troubles?

This novella is superb, a real page-turner that offers breathtaking world-building and complex characterization. Here, the demons are slaves who suffer pain at any infraction via a binding-spell that moves visibly under their flesh like a worm. The phoenixes are huge, fierce silver birds whose eggs have a mystical regenerative power.
The gorgeous descriptive contrasts of Storm Palace are worth the price of the book alone: while James wanders the airy, ethereal playgrounds of the wealthy, Morgan lurks in the industrial Third-World lower levels where the demons dwell. The demon ghetto is built into the Storm Palace so that they might as well be underground even though the Storm Palace itself is floating through the troposphere. It's a pressure-cooker atmosphere that reads like a waterfront squashed together with a factory.

Morgan and especially James show unusual sides to their personalities that increase the complexity of their portrayal in the first Hell Cop collection. James, who is a stunningly beautiful blond, seemed like a wounded innocent in the first collection. Here, he has matured, displaying an appealingly self-confident and scrappy toughness as he tackles the obstacles thrown in his way.

Even when Morgan engages in some rough, impersonal sex with him that is fueled by anger, he shrugs it off while seeming to understand and forgive the other man. It's a subtle and impressive scene in a memorable novella.

Here at Obsidianbookshelf.com, I hope that these three authors will continue publishing Hell Cop collections. Some series barely eke out new material and get nowhere over time, but not this one. Between the first and second collections, a lot of new terrain has come to light – both external (new creatures and locations) and internal (each couple faces almost insurmountable romantic challenges) – and yet there is so much potential here for ongoing exploration.

Especially fascinating to me here at Obsidianbookshelf.com is the situation with the demons. It seems that the closer the demon-species is to human, the better its lot in life. So you have full-citizens and professors like Michael Gold, and then you have the underclass like Vaughn the bicycle racer and the slave-workers in Storm Palace.

The most exploited are the sentient beings who have the misfortune not to look human who are harvested for their body-parts, which fuel the technology invented by the rich sorcerer families! How does that make someone like Michael feel to know that his kinsmen are so exploited? Perhaps revolution will soon be in the air … Here at Obsidianbookshelf.com, Hell Cop 2 is one of my Wildfire Newsletter Top Picks.
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