Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Once Bitten, Twice Shy is the first book in Jennifer Rardin’s urban fantasy series about Jasmine (Jaz) Parks, a CIA-assassin with a specialty in supernatural baddies. Jaz is not only a tough chick with a gun fetish (she has named her handgun Grief!), she’s also sassy, rather funny girl who has a sarcastic quip ready for just about any situation. She is, however, also damaged, something that the reader begin to suspect already from the beginning where her grumpy boss decides to partner her with the Agency’s top assassin Vayl, an almost 300 year-old vampire. Unlike many other novels in the urban fantasy genre, Once Bitten is not a romance though there is a tiny whiff of sexual chemistry between Jaz and Vayl, but it doesn’t interfere with the action-based plot.

The plotline revolves around a single mission that Jaz and Vayl is given six months into their partnership. On paper, it looks like a rather straightforward mission. They are to take out a high-profile celebrity plastic surgeon, which also happens to be the money-man for an extremist terrorist group called Sons of Paradise. And we are not talking militant Muslims here! Since Jaz and her partner regularly deal with the supernatural, this enemy is altogether scarier. The Sons of Paradise worship a mythical chaos-beast called the Tor-al-Degan and their ideal world makes the world-views of other religious extremists look rather warm and cuddly in comparison. However, Jaz and Vayl soon learn that their seemingly simple mission is a lot more complicated than what they initially thought. The scary chaos-sect is apparently involved with an even scarier character called the Raptor and both Jaz and Vayl find themselves as targets of repeated assassination attempts, indicating that there’s a mole in their own ranks. And, as icing on a not very pleasant cake, they learn that the Sons of Paradise plan to release not only a deadly virus but also a voracious chaos-beast into the population.

Once Bitten, Twice Shy is a very fast-paced novel. The story hits the ground running and just keeps accelerating. The fast pace covers a few logic whole and dues ex machinas in the plot, but it also precludes anything other than a superficial characterization. Vayl is a rather run-of-the-mill vampire, world-weary and suave, and not particularly interesting considering his long life-span. Only his rather funny snake phobia gives him a little unique colour.

When it comes to Jaz, Jennifer Rardin has done a much better job, which to some extent is the result of the first person narrative. Jaz comes across as tough, able and quite funny, despite the fact that her wise-cracking lines at times comes off as rather forced. She is also an emotionally damaged person. Her relationships with her family (father, sister and twin-brother) ranges from intimacy to severe dysfunction, she suffers from mysterious blackouts and as the narrative progresses the reader learns that she has survived some truly horrendous event. Jaz is thus very severely traumatized, but she is also unable to acknowledge this damage. I found this aspect of the novel the most interesting, and I must admit that I was not satisfied with Rardin’s explanation. The book is more about action than character, but since there’s a whole series planned, Jaz might become a more layered character.

Once Bitten can perhaps best be described as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets James Bond, i.e. fast-paced action where the Apocalypse is just around the corner, with a generous sprinkling of a wry, tongue-in-cheek humour:

Rardin also peppers her narrative with a welter of popular culture references, some of which are quite funny, but it will make to book look date in the course of a decade or two. The prose is generally unremarkable and the novel is for the most part competently put together (the exception being a lengthy and rather clumsy sequence where Jaz has an out-of-body experience in order to relate what happens elsewhere).

Once Bitten, Twice Shy does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: a fast-paced and generally light-hearted piece of fun. It stays on the surface of things, rather than exploring hidden depths, but that's ok. I personally found it very entertaining, and, let’s face it, once in a while you just feel like having popcorn instead of dinner.