Tiger has finally
taken the first steps against the sinister forces experimenting on children for
their own dark aims. But more children are missing - and those experiments are
gaining ground: the some vampires are walking in sunlight
To finally stop this
she needs to bring down Ciara the sinister architect behind this. But Ciara can
change her shape to look like anyone and apparently has influence at the very
top of government.
This book is action
packed - we open with Tiger charging into battle against these sinister
facilities and it doesn’t let up from there
And it’s really
satisfying to follow with this book of concrete action and results after the
sometimes confusion of the previous
books. We had a lot of
random events before and a whole lot of confusion from the large scale, highly
convoluted and multiple levels of conspiracy that was exposed but still pretty
hard to follow in the last two books
Now we have answers.
Now Tiger knows what she is up against and what needs to be done. And this born
weapon is going to charge into battle and kill everyone she needs to do to
bring this world ending conspiracy to an end. She knows who is responsible, she
knows their sinister plans - now the investigation has finished and it’s time
to blow it all up.
And can I say now
that I was pretty wary of Tiger for a while - the fact that she was designed to
be a seductive assassin made me think of a lot of terrible tropes: but we dodge
that. She is a lethal trained commando and warrior: we have no lethal
seduction, but a lot of guns and explosions.
This does come with
some interesting moral quandaries: especially in relation to the experiments
here. I.e. the people these illicit labs have created, the babies, what they
are, whether they can be saved, whether they should be saved, whether they’re
acceptable collateral damage. All of this is extra poignant to Tiger, an
artificially created being herself who saw so many of her people, especially
the children whose ghosts she still treasures, were destroyed as being unfit to
live.
She and Jonas have
also reached an interesting level. Their romance has been on the cards for some
time and, no, I’m not a fan. But I do like that they are addressing their
ancestral problems, their fighting on differing sides of the war, both being
party to atrocities for their own side… it isn’t just ignored. It is addressed,
they do talk about it.
And I love that Tiger
is also taking her very controversial species and involvement to the centre of
government itself for some really epic confrontations. I love that this series
is being so well capped off with so much drama, truly epic scenes and some
really excellent, exciting, blood fizzing scenes. There’s something so joyful
to cheer
We do have a number
of POC among the shifter packs and in government though they’re not exactly in
prominent roles, they are there. In terms of other women… the main presence is
a powerful witch who is an incredible leader and power in the city who
defends them in the great final battle. But she’s more a powerful force of
nature than a person - she there isn’t really a human, female presence in
Tiger’s life.
LGBTQ characters…
there are none, again. There is a flip moment of Tiger in the government
recognising a man who is a child predator - which is conflated a lot with him
being bisexual and both are also conflated with fetishes. Considering this is a
throwaway character she little spends 2 seconds talking two, please return to
erasure, no-one wants this.
This whole series has
always had an excellent setting and world building. It has always had an
intriguing main character with some interesting powers and some ghostly
companions. But it also had a highly complicated and involved plot line that
was, perhaps, somewhat confusing between the wraiths and the vampires and
sinister agencies and labs and kidnapped children and… it was confusing. But
now it’s all come together in an epic finale that is deeply satisfying
