Are you my mummy?

 I finished Tanya Huff's second collection of The Blood Books yesterday, consisting of Blood Lines and Blood Pact, both of which having a few emotional land mines in the prose. 

The first section deals with a pre-dynastic Mummy waking up in modern Toronto and essentially trying to set up shop on behalf of his own power and that of his Deity, who got folded in with Set after the Dynastic era started. As such, the Mummy more or less takes over Provincial police and government, while also deciding he wants to eat Henry's ka, while his god wants to eat Vicky's suffering. This does lead to some changed relationship dynamics in Henry and Mike's interactions, as both begin to realize that Vicki loves them both, but is not inclined to settle down with either of them. While this is all well written Dark Fantasy, Vicki's tortures while locked up by an out of control Mummy is a bit hard to get through. 

The second part, though, is really where the triggers are. Vicki spends the first part of the book avoiding talking to her never really seen mother in Kingston, mainly due to the ongoing rivalry between her suitors. Which doesn't work so well when Vicki figures out the reason behind the calls is that Mom was dying, and indeed is now deceased. Which leads Vicki to take the train to Kingston in a daze, without telling Herny or Mike what's going on. Both, of course, follow her, which leads into finding out that Mom's body isn't in the casket. Given this is horror and not the Christian Bible, it should come as no surprise that the resurrection of the body in this case has nothing to do with divine intervention, and everything to do with a crazed grad student, her greedy advisor, and a third assistant, who are using computers and bacteria to reanimate dead bodies.One of which happens to be Vicky's mom. Who manages to scare the heck of of everyone when she tries to walk home. By the finale, one student is dead, Henry gets captured, and eventually Mom and Vicki find each other. Which is by far one of the absolute hardest scenes to read in a book filled with reanimated corpses. 

This book ends with a fairly large surprise, although one that I knew about thanks to starting with the follow up Smoke series. I also wonder if, given some of the hints in the text, had these been written later, would Mike and Henry formed a true triad with Vicki, had social mores of the mid 90's likely dragged it down?

Seriously though, these are stil fun reads, although as I said above, a bit emotional.