Kate has now magically claimed the city of Atlanta – in direct
opposition to her father, Nimrod, the Builder of Towers. She and Curran, the
former Beast Lord of Atlanta, have also left the Pack and are trying to build a
new life and home in the suburbs. It’s a lot of changes to get used to.
And they have no time to get used to it - not with an ancient and powerful being
awakening in the city, one that may be immune to Kate’s magic and whose power
is growing after every terrifying event
And Curran has a project – the Mercenary’s Guild is
falling apart and he is determined to get it back in shape. Whether they want
it or not.
This is my happy book face.
It’s a combination of sheer glee that I got to read a
book this awesome, utter depression that it is now over and an undercurrent of
exhaustion because I was up all night and nothing short of heavy weapons would
make me put this book down. That is my happy book face
I actually pick up a new Kate Daniels book with a little bit of trepidation because I expect
this to be the one to disappoint me – my expectations for this series are so
high that eventually I will slam into a huge wall of disappointment
I thought this book would be that wall, after all, so
much changed in the last book: They’ve left the Pack, Kate has established
herself much more as a power, everyone knows who she is and Roland – that big
mysterious bad who has overshadowed the whole series, has become directly involved
rather than some shadowy, potential evil. That’s a lot of changes.
Thankfully all of those changes worked so well and made
me take back a lot of my misgivings. I was, originally, little irritated by
Kate and Curran leaving the Pack; but here we see not just Kate leaving the
Pack to protect them but Curran underlining that he also left the Pack because
the Pack failed him. This is something that has developed over the series in a
wonderfully subtle way – both Kate and Curran, while fighting for others and
epicly sacrificing for others, have also established that it’s ok to make room
for yourself, to demand your own happiness. Kate has grown to let people into
her life, to love Curran and her friends, even though it puts them at risk from
Roland and goes against everything her surrogate father taught her. And here we
see Curran turn to the Pack - the Pack he has worked for, sacrificed for,
battled for and risked everything for – and say “you failed me”. Curran has
turned round and said that, yes, he deserves better than how the Pack treated
him and Kate – and he walked away. No ridiculous over-the-top-martyrdom we see
so often in the genre (though they do risk and sacrifice a lot), but firmly
saying “no, there’s a limit. I did all this for you, I deserve better than
this.” Curran and Kate’s walking away was not just about protecting the Pack
but about asserting their own worth and value
I love that. And I love that this excellent point was
also rolled into an epic and awesome callout of Mahon – a paternal/mentor figure
of Curran. For a long time he has been there, an awkward but powerful force in
the Pack and it was epic to see this character dragged out on the carpet for
his stubborn arrogance, sexism and blatant manipulation of Curran and his
daughter George. I love this because we’re clearly still supposed to respect
Mahon – but even characters we like and respect can be terribly, epicly wrong,
have terrible ideas and behave in ways that are beyond unacceptable – and need
calling out for that. It was glorious. It was awesome. Curran was awesome during
it – and so was George, Mahon’s daughter who is certainly not standing for his
bullshit.
Points especially to George and her beyond epic skewering of the parental guilt trips used to control and manipulate their children
And I’ve just written several paragraphs about how much I
loved one relatively small aspect of this book.
I have praised the amazing world building of this series
with every book – and though it seems redundant to repeat it with every book –
I still have to do so. It is amazingly original and really well thought out and
layered – how the magic and tech switch back and forth, the way magic has
destroyed buildings, the organisations and industries that arose after the
Shift all worked out with incredible detail. It’s not just the concept – it’s
how it’s developed, detailed and made rich and real by considering all the potential
ramifications of this world, magic and dystopia. It’s an excellent world
But not only are the creative aspects of the world
amazing – there’s also a lot of research that goes into these books. Here we
have a lot of Middle Eastern mythology being invoked and I think there’s been a
huge amount of research into the subject before writing this book (including ghouls
– which
is a common problem with Urban Fantasy – taking ghouls as random cannibal
monsters with no nod to the origin of the ghoul mythology). Coupled with
the really detailed world building it makes this one of the best settings I’ve
come across. I can’t stress enough how much I love it.
I also loved the plot which excellently balanced the
ongoing meta as well as the plot of this book. I loved the growing meta with
Kate and her father’s highly complex relationship as Kate’s plans adjust and
she is now facing him directly while his motivation seem to be both mysterious
and certainly not as simple as trying to kill her. Kate and Curran moving into
the house in the suburbs was fun and had some issues for them to deal with – as
well as tier. Curran and Kate becoming more involved in the Mercenary’s Guild
promises to be an excellent story. It’s all excellent meta.
The plot for the book itself has lots of wonderful
research, a huge amount of action (and if I could dredge up a teeny tiny
criticism it would be that there are, perhaps, too many action scenes – but they’re
so well written and Kate is so awesome) and worked excellently with the
setting, the characters and the ongoing meta. It was exciting, well paced and
reminded us of the hugely powerful, epic forces in this world.
On top of all this, it’s often very funny. From Cuddles
the giant donkey to Kate trying to stop Andrea eating mystery meat – it’s funny.
I give special points to Kate openly lampooning the whole “I will make myself a
nuisance until someone tries to murder me” school of Urban Fantasy investigation
Speaking of funny – I love Kate and Curran’s
relationship. He keeps trying play Alpha boss on her and each time she mocks
him cruelly and righteously, summed up with this excellent line:
“Argh! Why don’t
you ever do anything I ask you to?”
“Because you don’t
ask. You tell me”
Also her excellently telling Curran that the early days
of their relationship when he broke into her house was indeed creepy. Their
relationship works because they both, occasionally, screw up and hurt the other
but they talk it through, point out the mistakes and work on it. They’re not
perfect, they do annoy each other but they don’t let that slide.
Diversitywise we have a huge number of POC in this book.
Kate is a WOC of Middle Eastern descent as her father, the great and powerful
Roland – or Nimrod – is from Ancient Babylon. George, a main character in this
book, is a Black woman (as his her mother, Martha, who is described as “a
Terminator” and the alpha of one of the shapeshifter clans). George’s kidnapped
partner, Eduardo of Middle Easten and Latino descent. Bahir, a Muslim contact
and major ally and force against the big bad in this book is of Arabic descent.
The new Beast Master is Jim, a major character in past books, is a Black man
and his consort is Dali, a woman of Indonesian descent who has grown
increasingly awesome over the course of the series. Several members of the
Mercenary Guild are POC, several members of the Order of Merciful Aid, some of
the characters involved in the plot – there are multiple POC in every group at
every stage of this book. The book not only mentions race but also often includes
ethnicity and culture (so, for example, a woman from the Order isn’t just noted
as a Black woman, she’s a woman of Tongalese descent. Dali isn’t just Asian,
she’s a woman of Indonesian descent, very much involved in her culture and her
magic and her family). Honestly, usually when I forget to mention a POC
character in a book it’s because their role is vanishingly tiny and forgettable
(and not nearly as important as the author likes to claim). This time it’s because
there were so many
In terms of LGBT people, we had a brief reappearance of
the Rat Alphas, a gay couple – but it was very brief unlike the last book. We
also have Barnabas who… continues to be more iffy. Barnabas, along with many
members of the Pack, is now separating to be part of Kate’s household… the book
makes a point of telling us why Derek is doing so – the lack of any role for
him in the pack as well as the long running in-book relationship between him
and Kate. They’ve been together for so long it would be unthinkable. I know why
George and Eduardo are leaving the pack – because of issues they have in Clan
Heavy. But why is Barnabas, the pack’s chief legal council, quitting his job
which he loves for a much less lucrative and involved job working for Kate and
Curran? Barnabas has served as Kate’s “nanny” (actual joke made in the series)
for a long time and, unlike Derek, there’s never really been an attempt to
establish this relationship or give any real reason why he is in service to
Kate. He is throwing away his life to run off and serve Kate and there’s no
story reason why he would do this beyond continuing to be her gay servant… it’s
a problem.
We do have several disabled characters – Doolittle only
plays a minor role in this book and Christopher is something of a mental
illness trope – he’s brilliant, a complete genius but is cryptic and often
nearly impossible to understand. George is a one-armed were-bear and having
one arm in no way detracts from how capable she is, talented she is, powerful
she is our outright dangerous she is. Her being one armed is never avoid, but
nor does it in any way make her less.
There I have spoke on the problems and I may now return
to my unreserved fanpoodling of this book and this series – one of my all time
favourites. This is one of those series where every new book release makes me
excited. I am torn between reading the book in one mammoth setting and trying
to slow down and make the awesomeness last – which I never manage, inevitably I
read it in one night and then struggle not to re-read it instantly Now I am
faced with a terrible dilemma – it will be months before the next book in this
series is released. Months.
