Dante, Heather, Von and Annie head back to New Orleans, back home. But there are a lot of people hunting them after what happened in the last book – and Dante’s secret is now well and truly shatteredWith multiple FBI agents, the Elohim from Gehenna, assassins, agents, vampires from several factions all vying for Dante’s attention, his life or his power, it’s a twisty maze to navigateEspecially since Dante’s mind is shattered, the past continually intruding into his daily senses and him constantly being brought down by agonising seizures as he tries to absorb his newly resorted memories and the horrors he’s lived through. Only Heather can anchor his damaged psyche to the present and control his omnipotent power.I’m wondering if this book was held upside down and somehow this caused all the story to pour to the end?Because it’s a 350 page book that has endless amounts of foreshadowing and the 8 gazillion characters all carefully moving into position before we actually get some stuff happening at about page 300.It’s not that there’s nothing in the rest of the book – but it’s either from the VAST CAST of side characters or it’s repeating what we already know.Dante is unstable, dangerous, has an extreme problem holding onto reality and keeps getting lost in flashbacks of his horrendous past which, unfortunately, means his quite literally omnipotent god powers go out of control. And it’s really well done – it’s extremely well written how these moments are described and you can feel the different realities colliding in his head. Sometimes with just a line of dialogue, sometimes a full seen which is brilliantly evocatively described. I take my hat off to this writing, it’s truly a master pieceAnd it was good the second time. And the third. And the fourth. The fifth was pretty good too and… ok, I get it! We don’t need more repetitions.And Heather loves Dante and Dante loves Heather and Annie is disturbed and shouldn’t trusted. Repeated a hundred times.Then there’s an FBI chase that gets called out. There’s an FBI cover up of the dramatic proportions – so we see all the detail. We see them discovering in shock and horror what happened, the sheer extent of Dante’s power and try desperately to put a lid on it. It’s, again, really well written, exciting and extremely evocative as FBI and SB agent after agent look at what happened and struggle to come to terms with the sheer power of what has happened. I love it, I love their realisation, I love their struggling to understand, I love their hurry to get control over it…And then there’s a several page radio interview of civilians reporting on the FBI cover up… why? I already know what the FBI are doing. I saw them do it. Why do I need it rehashing? Why is this section even here.Then there’s the FBI and SB agents running around and, in the revelation, more and more of them splintering into various factions as they grasp what is happening, what has happened and what that means for them.So we have Merri and Emmet, vampire and human team who I like, agents of the SB they know their boss is lying to them and run away before being messed with. They go rogue and possibly hitting up a faction of vampires.Then there’s their boss, Gillespie, who lied to them who has decided to go rogue and ignore his orders because of various reasons. He’s a separate rogue from them.Then there’s Rutgers, who we remember went rogue last book, well she’s gone well and truly rogue now to be a full blown loose cannon.Then there’s Underwood, the woman who drove Rutgers into going rogue. Guess what? She’s going rogue! Only less dramatically, she’s being all sneakily rogue instead.We have Caterina, SB assassin, who already went rogue last book. But her handler is going rogue a DIFFERENT way to kill his boss because he disagrees with the rules. And she disagrees with both the boss and her handler, so she’s like rogue twice over.Seriously, this many agents ready to go rogue it makes me wonder how such ethically questionable (in fact, let’s not mince words about assassins and torturers) managed to hold it together at all! How do they make any decisions without half of the organisation heading to the hills with guns to play loose cannon? I look forward to the day they switch to decaf – and then the caffeinated hordes of SB and FBI agents will head to the Starbucks, gun in hand ready to bring down the system and do what is right – no matter the cost (it sounds better if you read it in a dramatic movie voice over style).Read Me
