Stakes and Bones: Seattle Slayers Series #1 by Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee
Roxy goes from Boston to Seattle. She wants to follow in the steps of her father who was a Seattle slayer who fought against various paranormal baddies. There are Seattle landmarks mention and other Seattle bits to keep it well placed. Writing had a lot of fast paced action that didn't seem to stick in my brain.
Bricks and Murder: Seattle Slayers, Book 2 by Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee
Roxy is a member of the Seattle Slayers and is trying to earn money and get a cure to send back to her mother. There is a lot of action and references to some post-apocalyptic Seattle landmarks. Writing is better than standard fantasy genre, but still hard to get into.
Blood and Blades: Seattle Slayers, Book 3 by Ken Bebelle and Julia Vee
A fighting competition with a large prize attracts many participants. There are various supernatural creatures as well as human types participating. They have teams and various partnerships appear. The protagonist works through it and then does some great task at the end. She passes out and wakes up much later. Eventually, she wakes up and considers leaving Seattle to return to Boston. However, at the end her sister shows up after traveling out there and bringing a care package. The writing is crisp and concise. This book seemed to click better than the other ones in the series.
Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel by C Pam Zhang
Start with a post-apocalyptic climate change scenario. Add a bit of Jurassic Park and Elon Musk. Then center it around the life of an aspiring chef and you have this novel.
The protagonist is a washed out young adult who embelishes her experience to get a cook position in the mountains of Italy. She had picked a good time to be in Europe. A natural disaster wrecked havoc on the the Americas. There was still some time before the conditions spread to Europe. Luckily, were up in the mountains were things were not as bad.
The compound was led by a visionary. Not only did they want to preserve the flora and fauna of earth, they wanted to bring back other extinct species. They would bring in various dignitaries to sample some of their delicacies. (How about a Mammoth burger?)
Our protagonist has adventures in cooking as well as relationships. Eventually, the wrong party comes to power, and they are forced to leave. She doesn't want to go along, so makes her way back to a normal life. They part ways.
The book then rushes to a quick end. We later hear that group didn't follow sufficient safety protocols and they were all killed on an attempted rocket launch. The world also comes back to a better state. This ending feels fairly contrived. The author appeared more interested in exploring the relationships and seems to have given up on the rest of the story.
