Ryan Attard

So we have a wizard who's sort of out of the closet and working as a PI, with some contacts on the police force who know to call him when something weird is going on. And then bad stuff happens, and he needs to power up when the forces of heaven and hell drag him into a war they've been brewing up for millennia. And he has a smartass pervert sidekick demon familiar, trapped in an unusual form as a punishment. He's also hopeless with women--even when one is a succubus, a bit of a nerd, and has father figure issues. And he really likes his black trenchcoat.

Sound familiar?

The basic setup is large amounts of Dresden, with a dash of the Nightside and a sprinkling of Fix, spiced up with some Supernatural style dickhead angels and cutesy demons. But as awful as that could have been, it's pretty good.

The writing is pretty sharp, particularly the cat/demon sidekick who has all the best lines, and the major characters are refreshingly aware they're kind of badass but not invincible, so instead of parading around going "aw shucks, did I do that?" they are just trying to get stuff done without
getting everyone else killed in the process.

I could probably sum this up with: If you recognise and like any of those references I just threw in there, you'll probably like this quite a lot.

No romance, no cliffhanger (but plenty of room for the story to continue). Really the only downer is that despite this being a couple of years old, there's only one followup out (hey, this is not G.R.R. Martin here, in self-pub, a series that's lain dormant for two years tends never to get finished, so I'm cautious). Also that followup, from the blurb, appears to be more about backstory than a continuation.

I would definitely keep reading this series, if it continues. That said, this reads pretty fine as a standalone, so it's well worth picking up (not least because it is free now and then).… (more)