The first book in this series was entertaining, with a similar vibe to the John Wick movies.
This is a dark but not particularly deep action movie in book form.

The author never lets an opportunity go by to point out, in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner, that the protagonist doesn't make clichéed decisions for plot purposes or otherwise.
This often takes the form of, "Of course, I don't do clichéd thing X, but instead..." However, this becomes frustrating because the author starts to use these same clichés as plot devices, especially in the sequels.
In the finale of the third book, this became so abysmally bad that I dropped it, even though I was only a couple of hours away from the end of the series.

In the sequels, the fight scenes are often reminiscent of classic action movie choreography.
For fights against grunts, it feels like playing one of those retro 2D brawlers where everyone just waits for you to whup their asses. For "boss battles", the scenes frequently feel like those stupid action movie fights that are essentially round-based.

The magic is soft as a baby bunny. While there are stories that can work well with vague magic, this is not one of them. It never seems like there is any internal logic behind the magic that the reader just doesn't know about. It's arbitrary at best and is often used as a plot device to adjust situations to the author's needs.

All that being said, it sounds really bad, but I actually had fun reading the series, especially the first book, and the second one was fine as well. However, the flaws kept piling up over time, making it worse and worse, and by the third book, it just became too much for me.

To be fair, I want to mention that some aspects of story-telling, that I frequently find horrendously butchered by other authors, are really well done in this series. ( )

Woah! Super intense ( )

I have mixed feelings about this book. I wanted to love it; I read it straight through. However, I didn't like the main character, who was basically a former mob enforcer. She's driven by rage with two magical guns who (yes, "who" is correct here) egg her on. I really liked the dog, though and there was a hook at the end that got me to pre-order the next book in the series.

I think part of my problem is that I got dropped into an urban fantasy world that didn't get much explaining. Are "abnormals" good/bad/just normal folks with magic/something else? What is their status in the world?

I did like some of the twists and turns, but the problem with first-person narrative is that the reader is as surprised as the character at those twists. I prefer to have some foreshadowing, though.

If you are a fan of the author, you will probably like the book. If you are a fan of urban fantasy, you might try it out. I suspect the next book will be better. ( )

Shannon Mayer is BACK with a brand new urban fantasy series. I haven't loved the last couple books that Mayer has put out, but Nyx knocked my socks off.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm a mother or just the fact that it was such a young life lost, but the death of Nyx's son tore me apart. The blurb tells us that it happens, but it didn't make it any easier to read about. Mayer did a really good job at conveying the level of grief that would come during this kind of tragedy and I felt like I lost Bear right beside Nyx.

FURY OF THE PHOENIX isn't all sad moments. Nyx is pretty bad-ass and can kick butt like no other. She doesn't let her grief drown her, instead it helps her do what needs to be done. The cast of characters was another interesting part of FURY OF THE PHOENIX. I didn't know who to trust and even when I thought I knew, something threw a wrench into the mix and showed me I was wrong.

There are quite a few questions left unanswered and lines left open at the end of FURY OF THE PHOENIX. I'm very excited, to be excited, to read the next book in Shannon's new Nyx series.

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )