Jane has three jobs in this book – Katie, Leo’s
unpredictable second-in-command vampire, wants her to find where two of her
working girls have disappeared to; previous good friends of Jane. Leo himself
is having a great big shindig and wants Jane to handle the security just in
case they’re invaded by werewolves again – especially since the guest is a new
addition to Leo’s vampires and he doesn’t trust the man one iota. As ever, Leo
is engaged in a long game of lots of subtle plotting and has firmly cast Jane
in the role of doing terrible things he can then deny he had any part in.
And Jane’s best friend, Molly, has disappeared. Her
husband Evan arrives in town, distraught, knowing only that Molly was heading
to see Jane when she disappeared – and that she doesn’t appear to want to be
found.
Throw in some deadly vampire magic, some lethal magic
artefacts, a whole lot of revelations and a side order of closure and Jane has
a very full plate to handle.
We spent a lot of interesting time in Jane’s head this
book. Firstly, this is the book where everyone knows she’s a Skinwalker –
everyone she meets is told. Jane’s reaction to this is excellent and complex,
with both a feeling of exposure after having kept her secret so long but also a
vast feeling of relief. She can now talk about these things with people, she
can talk about her history, she can be open about her abilities and it’s
amazingly freeing. She’s happy to use her sense of smell or her strength (and
make it clear to people “Not human, deal with it”, if it shocks them). This
brought a lot of her history out in the open for everyone to know, her nature
and her abilities which sets us off in a whole new direction and tone for the
books.
Jane’s ongoing struggle to reconcile her job and the
things she has to do with her strict moral upbringing and her own sense that
she is not a good person. She also has the battle between her Christian faith
and her returning memory bringing more and more of her Cherokee beliefs to the
fore. It’s a wonderful crisis of identity and morality that has been at the
margins of Jane’s character for a long time and it really comes to a head in
this book.
There was a bad moment – Rick. I hate Rick. No, that’s
not fair, I don’t hate Rick, Rick is not a bad character. What is bad is what
happens to Jane whenever Rick is around – she becomes a lovestruck fool, her
sense of professionalism goes out the window and her emotions get in the
driving seat. Some of these are natural reactions, but Jane takes it to the
next level – including having to run out of a function she is chief of security
for, while the big bad is right there, so she can go be weepy in a corner.
Sorry everyone, play nice for half an hour, our chief warrior is bawling her
eyes out.
I think in some ways this book was a drawing a number of
storylines to a close and setting a new paradigm – Rick and Jane may not be
over but the coffin is being prepared even if it isn’t nailed shut yet. Jane’s
reconciliation with Molly is now sealed, ending that conflict. Jane is open
about her nature and history to everyone and has come to terms with her
actions, her morality and her identity. Even Jane and Leo – while I think Jane
has still been ridiculously forgiven, is now heading down the path of
reconciliation. We also have closure on Jane and Beast, on what Jane did to
Beast and a new peace and acceptance between them. I think a line has been
drawn under these issues, they’re not over and they may be revisited, but there’s
a definite sense that they’ve been resolved or are on their way to being. I
really like this because I feel a lot of these issues can end up dragging on
for book after book and you end up on a later book constantly bogged down by
ongoing issues that never get resolved – especially since many if not all of
these issues come with heavy loads of guilt.
Now to the story. Honestly, while I think the three
interwoven storylines were complex and exciting and interesting and well
thought out to create a really good mystery, I had great difficulty following
them. There were several characters who I just lost, several plot lines that
bemused me. Frankly, I’m still not entirely sure how we reached the ending, who
was what bad guy and while I knew what the bad guy was doing, I wasn’t sure how
he was doing it. I really liked that we drew on a lot of past storylines
without lots of excess recapping – which I loved – but I have to admit that
perhaps, just perhaps, a little bit of recapping would have made the story
easier to follow
And while there was a sense of Jane being harried because
she had so much to do and so many conflicting priorities, at the same time I
often felt like she was neglecting some of the cases. Of course, this was
largely because there was often a case where she couldn’t do anything until
Alex came through with more data or someone did – but Molly in particular often
felt less of the priority that I hoped she would be. Objectively, there’s
nothing more Jane could have done, but while reading the book it felt
neglected.
Minority-wise, the Jane Yellowrock series always does
well in terms of number of POC. Jane herself is Cherokee – and not just as a
descriptor (often used to justify character woo-woo without informing the
character at all), but with culture and history that is being unfolded every
book and is an integral part of her identity and one of the bedrocks of her
character. She has her Cherokee mentors who she deeply respects and guide her.
Her business partners – Eli and Alex – are both POC and this book further
emphasised not just how competent they both are, but also how much she values
them as well, that they are most certainly part of her family. Derek Lee and
his squad are all Black, and Derek isn’t just the silent warrior in the
background. The representatives of the African shapeshifters, the main force in
the were world are also Black, as we’ve seen before. The negative side to this
is Ricky being pulled from Jane by a Black, female wereleopard who is “in heat”,
which carries a heavy load of “Jezebel” and the over-sexed Black women trope
There are no GBLT people, again, though we refer to the
cook who, if you have been playing close attention to the whole books, is gay.
And, really, it’s not like he’s a character so much as the guy who cooks and
does laundry off screen
There are some hooks in this book for the next in the
series – a strange attack on Jane and Bruiser, Bruiser himself as independent,
the European Vampires arriving… but I didn’t much like how they were done. The
story was so packed and a little bit confused that they felt like more
distractions in a story that needed more focus.
This all leaves me with a book I love, but with a number
of relatively minor elements to it that I found irritating, awkward or clumsy.
It eases itself towards a 4 fang book, an awesome read, but takes a step back
because of those elements just stopping it reaching that 4.
