Leslie Claire Walker

Odd mix of power levels from teenagers growing into their new responsibilities vs fully manifested gods. The necessary balance isn't there for this to work properly. It's an interesting world but trying too hard with too many options to be fully developed and hence the reader is left short changed.

Night has fled from the assassins guild after being targeted to kill a family including a young girl. She's never asked questions before, the guild having her only life. Now she knows the guild show more hunts her very move, but her and Faith have managed to make a living for 16 years. Faith also knows some magic being able to converse with gods. Nights peaceful life is disturbed when an old friend manages to track her down, despite her best efforts at hiding. The friend reveals that many ancient powers are stirring.

The characters were ok, a few too many to have more than brief outlines, and the mix of magic skills seems clever, but there's little explanation of how this interacts with the 'normal' world around them, the kids bunk school, houses burn etc, with no recourse.

A little more polish and attention to detail and it could become quite good. show less

Not quite what I'd expected... particularly as the focus of the series seems to shift away from the protagonist of this book.

Kevin's just a normal teenager living with his alcoholic dad, trying to hook up with girls etc, until he starts hearing premonitions of danger - serious danger. He doesn't really know what to do, and can't believe anyone else will take him seriously, but finds out that his school Councillor knows something about faerie, as does, very surprisingly, the local school cool show more kid. From these hints he's directed to the singer - a half fae, who has the power of compulsion through her voice. It seems likely she is or was the councilor's daughter, taken by the Hunt, but managed to retain at least some of her humanity although even that is failing. Kevin's dad believed that kevin's mum was also abducted by the Wild Hunt and all Kevin has to do is defeat the King and return life to more or less normal.

It just about all hangs together more or less, being a little bit free and easy with established faerie lore, but self consistent. Kevin's role as a newly awakened to the possibility of the fae is well done. show less

Weirdly the protagonist is now not Kevin (although he features) but he cool kid from school who's the actual faerie seer, but one of the less interesting characters from the first book.

He wakes up one morning to find the world's turned strange, most people are missing and nothing feels right. A little bit of investigating finds a few other usefully awake people and they piece together what's happened - a bored teenager has summoned a demon lord, and the earth is slowly turning into Hell. It show more can all be reversed they just have to defeat the demon.

There's lots of running around, hunting for the requisite parts of the spell, and then a big showdown, and then everything goes back to normal. I found this somewhat dull. The sole redeeming feature is that very suddenly we're introduced to Malefus, who's a fallen god, cursed mute, but able to tattoo abilities onto people for a price. I've no idea why he wasn't in the first book, or really why he's in this one. However the author has written other stories with him in, and he's much more fun than the rest. show less

Another very good read in the Soul Forge series. It definitely occupies its own space, but fans of Dresden and Buffy the Vampire Slayer will love this series! I'd definitely recommend it!