Lane Robins

4.5/5
Lyn Benedict is such an understated author, and her books are awesome! They are everything I love about urban fantasy: a hard, kick ass, smart heroine, wonderful sidekicks, plenty of villains of magical variety and non-stop action.

If you haven't read previous two books, please do it first, because this review will contain spoilers for book 1 and 2.

The book literally starts where the previous left. Odalis is in prison and Sylvie takes on a seemingly easy case of disappeared wife. Aha! She thought her previous case would be boring, and we all know how it ended.

While investigating her case, Sylvie discovers that her client's wife is one of the several kidnapped victims, whose life energies are being drained by a sorcerer in a really bizarre ritual. The women look dead but they walk and they turn into wild animals.

The case quickly becomes extremely dangerous, what with the sorcerer mixed with gods, certain people bent on magical revenge and stupid ISI agents taking closer look at miss Shadows.

As usual it takes famous Shadows willpower to set things right, and apparently there is the new Lilith in town...

I loved it! The book is packed full of action and crammed with tension, with Ghoul and Marco playing Sylvie's sidekicks, and even my favorite Fury making a star appearance.

I also admire that Lyn Benedict isn't afraid to kill one of the characters in every book she writes. This just make the plot more real and the writing much more intense. The ending had such amazing possibilities that I can't wait to get my hands on the next book!

I would recommend it to any fan of urban fantasy. Just make sure you read first two books in order.… (more)

Not a bad stopping point, if that's how it ends up.

Lots of things came to a head in this book, and the way it ends makes it equally possible that this is the end of the story or just the conclusion of the first arc. Given that the book was published over a year and a half ago, I am inclined to believe the former - and that's okay. Most of the loose ends got resolved, and the last chapter works in either case - as an epilogue or a teaser. Personally, I think trying to continue the series would probably be a bad thing. Sylvie works best in a certain kind of setting, and she no longer lives there. I understand there may be a spinoff book about what the Ghoul's been up to, and that's cool, but Sylvie just wouldn't be the same without having to deal with a world that...well, I can't say more than that without giving away the big spoiler.

Over all, the series was a solid read. Nicely chaotic when it needed to be, and it kept things from getting comfortable. Now that Sylvie shows signs of settling down, it's probably best that we let her do just that.… (more)