Monday, April 30, 2012

Finder - Sin Eater by Carla Speed McNeil

Finder - Sin Eater by Carla Speed McNeil

Jaeger is a half-aborigine and an ex-soldier, rouge, wanderer, and much more. He has an uncanny healing ability even to the point he has to keep re-inking his tattoos. But most of all he is a finder, member of some sort of secret order of detectives and trackers; plus he's a sin-eater, thus a pariah but respected for his work of taking blame and punishment for someone else. Jaeger is also a borderline personality, incapable of settling, always restless, a twitching although basically good-natured mass of contradictions, a jack-of-all-trades, a master fighter.

Most of this storytime focuses on his relationship with his old mate and his ex-commanding officer Brigham Grosvenor who seems to be losing his mind.  Brigham was Jaeger’s commanding officer during his brief stint in the army. A Medawar from a police family, Brigham ended up in the military after he bucked family and clan tradition by marrying a Llaverac. After being assigned to a small, predominantly Medawar outpost, Brigham became increasingly unbalanced, holding Emma and their three children prisoner—first subtly, then directly—for several years.  So now Jaegar has to decide who he is loyal too.

I had read some reviews of the complete collection and just found it to be very overwhelming so tried this collection of issues 1-14 & 22. Reading the commentary the author has at the end is interesting as it gives one a window of why she wrote that section. The hardest part of this collection is that time seems fluid and flows back and forth that I kept getting characters confused. But I found myself enjoying it the 2nd time around once my brain had time to process it all.