This contains spoilers about the first book but I tried to keep any references to events of this book very vague.
While her still being an actually smart MC is still very refreshing and appreciated I felt like the MC had very little agency in this book. Everything she does is just the only logical path of action available to her. While this definitively doesn't make her replaceable as a character like it does in other books it still somewhat takes away her relevance a little.

While she recognizes when she is being bullied or manipulated, she never really manages to get into a position to actually do anything about it. She grumbles, admonishes and even threatens the people that wrong her but in the end, she just takes it without any actual consequences for those people. I feel like these people are never really given a reason to stop messing with her.
This frustrated me a great deal. I can accept that an eye for an eye is not a good policy to keep the peace but these people just getting away without suffering any consequences at all just rubs me the wrong way.
This was the case in the first book as well but then she had a somewhat better excuse because she was very new and entirely powerless in rank as well as ability. Maybe I am just too impatient to see her grow into a force to be reckoned with.

Something else that broke my immersion somewhat was how much the author tries to show off the MCs ability I guess you could say. In the first book, both deaths were absolutely justified. I could totally see how she ended up in these situations without being a dimwitt and that she couldn't get herself out of them alive either.
This wasn't always the case in this book. Her power level in general, for a lack of a better term, is all over the place. One scene she manages awesome feats and the next she has trouble walking without stumbling over nothing depending on where the author wants the current scene to go. Writing it down like this makes it sound worse than it is though. It felt badly manufactured only in one case.
While she only ends up dead in a few of these situations, her physical abilities are very inconsistent in general.

I've already accused Helen Harper of putting a huge amount of effort only in the first book and becoming increasingly sloppy further into a series. I have read 12 books spanning at least 4 other series by her and most of them followed this same pattern.
I generally seem to find more and more flaws with books the further I get into a series but this is usually due to the development of the plot requiring the author to tackle disciplines they are less skilled in or the author getting tangled in their own web of plot threads or not being able to keep personalities consistent. None of which is usually the case with this author. Maybe I am doing her a huge injustice here but it truly feels like she just puts less and less effort in later books of a series.
I really hope Midnight Smoke will prove me wrong because I like this series a lot so far and I will definitively continue with it. ( )

Infernal Enchantment
By Helen Harper
This is book two in the Firebrand series. I bought the first five books already! I am really enjoying these characters and this world. She finds that when she dies, she comes back to life about 12 hours later. No one has ever met someone like her, even among the supernatural groups. She finally figures out what she is from the book Infernal Enchantment, but you kinda figured it out from book one.
She's a detective and not really a great one in self protection because she dies so much! If she wasn't a special supernatural then she wouldn't have a long career! ( )

Another too hot day spent disappearing into Helen Harper's Firebrand series. I don't normally read a series back to back but with this series, in this weather, that's like opening a box of Pringles and telling yourself that you're only going to eat one when you know you'll graze until they're gone.

'Infernal Enchantment' carries on a few weeks after 'Brimstone Bound'. I was delighted that Helen Harper avoided all the second book in a series pitfalls. She didn't spend a lot of time rehashing what happened in book one and she didn't repeat the plot with small changes. She introduced a new mystery to solve, she put our heroine, Emma, into new kinds of dangerous situations and even gave her the training to handle them. She introduced new types of supernatural creatures, giving me a picture of ghouls I've never had before. She succeeded in making humans the most dangerous element in the story while continuing to develop Emma's insight into the politics of the wolves and the vampires.

Best of all, she kept up the energy and the pace so that my attention never lagged and while she developed the relationship between Emma and the lead vampire, she didn't let it devolve into a Supernatural Romance cliché of unresolved sexual tension that's eventually going to result in the mandatory sex scene. Instead she enhanced Emma's awareness of the vampire's ability and instinct to weaponise his charm and made her wonder about how far she could trust someone with that habit. She let Emma grow without changing into someone I didn't recognise any more and she's really got me guessing about the is it? / isn't it sentient? car.

The action scenes worked. The mystery was interesting. The conclusion was satisfying. I could see things coming without knowing how they would work out, which is always fun and, while I learned more about Emma and her world, I was left hungry to learn more.

So it's a good job that I've already downloaded the next book in the series, 'Midnight Smoke' so I can start it this evening as I sit in the garden with a decent cider in my hand.
( )