June Stevens - Moon Sisters

Authoress : 

D.J. Westerfield writing as  June Stevens

Official website : 

June Stevens

Series : 

The Moon Sisters

Part 1 : Voodoo Moon

Part 2 : Immortal Moon

Genre : 

Urban Fantasy - Post Apocalypse / Adult Romance 18+

Description on the Official website : 

A sinister magic is sweeping across Nash City…

To Fiona Moon, it’s just another day at work. And some days, well, they’re a helluva lot worse than others. As a member of the elite Black Blade Guard, Fiona is tasked with hunting down the most-dangerous Paranorm criminals. To find out who is kidnapping mages and sucking the life energy from their bodies, she has to work with the one man that embodies everything she despises.

Master Necromancer Ian Barroes, a rich professor of Necromantic Studies, wants only one thing in this world… Fiona.

They each hold secrets that could destroy them, but that could also be the key to destroying the evil Voodoo priest, Bokor. They must learn to trust each other and track down Bokor before more innocent lives are lost. When Fiona becomes a target of the evil madman, she is lured into his trap. Now, she and Ian have to fight for survival… and their very souls.

*****

Description as I would publish it : 

A little over two hundred years ago in the year of technology called 2012, the North and South Poles started shifting. It was gradual at first and lasted a couple of decades. When it was over, the shift wasn't exactly ninety degrees, but it was close enough that east became north, north became west, and so on. The shift caused a climatic Cataclysm that pounded the world with storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters for more than forty years. 

Damn Mayans.

Whole cities were destroyed, and governments crumbled. Famine ran rampant. Widespread panic caused wars, which killed even more than the natural disasters and starvation. When the smoke and weather finally cleared, the world had changed drastically. What had once been the Eastern United States was now a peninsula called Appalachia made up of a range of mountains in the west and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean inn the north and east, as well as the newly formed Mississippi Sea in the south. Only two major cities, what had once been Nashville and Atlanta, remained partially standing. From those ruins rose the autonomous city-states of Nash and Atlanta. 

For more than fifty years after the start of the Cataclysm, every city, town and community was at war with each other and internally. Finally, the Paranorm Council of Elders stepped in to bring peace and unity. While the two city-states were completely autonomous in rule, they were allied under the Council of Elders along with three other city-states - Okie City and Sanlou to the south, and New Winnipeg in the west.  Many areas in the south and west had resisted the Council. Some set up legitimate governments of their own, but many other were ruled by warlords and tyrants. 

The city-state of Nash claimed jurisdiction over several small fishing, farming and industrial villages throughout southern Appalachia, but the main part of it was built around the heart of the original city and separated into two main parts - Nash City and New Nashville. 

The walls of Nash City rose up out of the ground like a lumpy, gray fortress. Sentries marched along the top. The path and most of the materials for the walls of Nash City had once been a vast highway that looped around downtown Nashville. But when the Cataclysm began, mages and other paranorms used it as the building blocks of a wall to protect the people who huddled within.

*****

I absolutely love the setting. What I wrote above is really just a part from the book where the current situation is explained. But during the story you come to realize that the writer did a great job in figuring out all the details and consequences of the Cataclysm. And yes, I'm a sucker for details. The main character is Fiona Moon, one of the three Moon sisters, and she is a kick-ass Black Blade Guard. The story of the Moon sisters is just as well thought off as the setting is. Most of the characters I came across are in fact quite interesting. Even though it is a Romantic 18+ paranorm novel it does have a great background story. At the moment I've only read the first part, Voodoo Moon, but I will be reading the second part soon enough.