This book is an interesting futuristic urban fantasy. However there are quite a few loose ends and things left unexplained, so hopefully the next book in the series will help fill in the blanks. ( )

Kate Daniels is a mercenary in the magically fluctuating city of Atlanta. When she learns her guardian and closest thing to a family has been murdered while performing an investigation Kate takes it upon herself to find out why and exact a bit of revenge. Her path leads her to both vampire puppeteers and the shape shifter king, Curran, and into the ongoing conflict between them.

This story, for all that it really isn't that long, took a long time to get started. With urban fantasy I understand the need to lay history and introduce characters but it really dragged for me. The idea of a world in which the magic comes and goes unexpectedly and people have learned to live with it by having two sets of everything from lights to cars, is interesting. It is just in this case the interesting bits along with all the character introductions at the same time were too much and too dragged out. The characters were enjoyable and I liked them, particularly Curran and Derek. The lead seems to be the stereotypical urban fantasy heroine, a tough girl who is critical of her own looks (despite the fact all the guys want her), goes around fighting and is abrasive to everyone around her. Kate's saving grace (IMHO) is that she does make mistakes and is able to drum up a bit of humility as a result. Once we got about two-thirds of the way through the story did get much better and I actually enjoyed the last couple chapters enough to toss around the idea of picking up the sequel.

Generally this was a fairly midline urban fantasy with some interesting plot points and well thought out characters that got much more interesting as it went along. If I hadn't read so many of these before, I'd probably have liked it a bit better. ( )

This one got off to a slow start and I did keep putting it back down for a while, but after a few stops and starts I finally settled into the book. One criticism is the oblique references to Kate's own blood and no explanations of why it's so important, although you will get some suspicions nearer to the end of the novel. The blood issue is something, I'm guessing, the autor is building up to in the next book (or three).
Overall not a bad opening book, if you can stick with it beyond the first couple of chapters. Once it gets going, it's a good read. ( )

Cool new series featuring a mercenary in a futuristic Atlanta overrun by magic. ( )

Enjoyable read, reminded me of the first several books in the Anita blake series, but a bit more in depth.