We follow Delilah this book – and how her life has changed. Following a skunk-inspired make-over and realising that her relationship with the now nigh-immortal Chase is coming to a close, she enters a new chapter of her life with the Autumn Lord – and his sexy representative.Along the way, they have a kidnapped werewolf to rescue, a spirit seal to find and some dangerous werecoyotes to thwart. And, of course, there’s still the Bonecrusher to defeat – and she’s bringing the fight to the sisters’ home.This series is HUUUUUUUUUUUGE!And I don’t just mean number of books. I can tackle several books. But it’s HUUUUUGE within those books. It has a vast cast of characters and the author has really gone out of her way to ensure every single one of those characters is a character. They’re not just names. They have things happening in their lives. They have lives, they have issues, they have their own stories and battles and causes.Which is certainly good in some ways, don’t get me wrong! But there are a gazillion billion trillion of them all handling their stuff at the same time. Ok, maybe not handling their stuff, but certainly mentioning their stuff at least.This goes along with a huge amount of recapping. A truly vast amount of recapping – and so much has happened in each sister’s life and the story in general that some of it is helpful – but it adds to the unwieldiness, bogs down the pacing and drags the story down.There’s also still a problem with the writing. It has IMMENSELY improved since earlier books, don’t get me wrong, especially the fight scenes (though I still think we see far more of what everyone else is doing in combat than is realistic or necessary) but we still have things like the group meetings where everything is reiterated (again, not nearly as bad). The worst habit remaining though are clothes, cares and scenary. They can drive from A to B without me knowing exactly how they’re getting there, I don’t need to know what car they’re driving or who is in what car and I really really really don’t need to know what clothes everyone is wearing all the time. By this stage, we know what clothes everyone habitually wears, take it as a given.In fact, even if all the characters were just names there are still far too many people for me to keep them all together and I’m forgetting people because there’s just so much to keep track of. Seamus, Rozuriel, Carter (and his daughter – I entirely forgot to pair of them), the sisters’ father, Zachary, the necromancer bloke, the healing elf, various and sundry shapeshifters…I feel like there’s just a lot of storylines that maybe aren’t needed – some of them make for great background flavour so long as it doesn’t intrude further. But we’ve already got the 3 sisters and then there’s Chase and his new immortality, and a new dragon on the scene (and we’ve recently had the rather unnecessary distraction of Smokey’s father) and now we have Carter’s demon network/titan research group. We have the humans and their anti-fae antagonism. We have the sister’s father turning on Camille. I just wonder if they’re really all necessary – or if it’s necessary to have them involved as much as they are – especially when you pile on all the new characters as well.Read More
