Unknown-Rachel Caine

Unknown
Rachel Caine
Roc, Feb 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780451463098

Powerful djinn Cassiel has lived for countless millennia, but never cared either way about humans as she believed she is superior to these beasts. Pearl, once a djinn, but now so much more, was defeated thousands of years ago after she killed the first mortals who walked on the land. Cassiel defeated her, but failed to kill her and feeling the pain of all those she killed drove Pearl insane. She wants to kill all the djinn with her new power source being the mortals, Wardens and their oracles.

When Cassiel’s master orders her to destroy humanity, she refuses. Her punishment is severe as she is turned into a helpless human, but adapts as Warden Luis Rocha mentors her as a Warden. Peal killed Luis’ brother’ his wife and kidnapped their daughter Isabel; just like she has abducted other warden offspring to serve as her foot soldiers in the war she plans against the djinn. Luis and Cassiel vow to rescue Isabel as they have seen what Pearl has done to other children. However, it is Cassiel who risks her life to rescue Isabel and the other children locked inside of Pearl’s compound.

Unknown, the second book in the Outcast series (see Undone) reads somewhat like a middle fantasy tale as it sets up the final confrontation between the forces of Pearl and those with Cassiel. The heroine starts to have strong feelings about Luis; which frightens her because she is becoming too humanized and can never return to what she was as she never gave a damn about humans for the epochs when she was a djinn. Fans will root for her against Pearl and for her to make it with Luis as Rachel Caine provides another compelling urban fantasy.

Harriet Klausner