I was really surprised when I messaged the author and she told me she was working on book 6...as i said before...i was in it all the way with Heather & Dante...can't wait to continue my adventure with them! ( )

Most of the time I can't keep myself away from Adrian Phoenix's books, because they are pure, hard-boiled urban fantasy, but on this occasion I felt pretty overwhelmed.

The plot reached its culmination in the previous book, and I justifiably felt that we would get some sort of resolution or at least some answers in the following book. Well, not so much.

Everything gets more and more complicated, Heather and Dante can't catch a break and go through obstacle after obstacle to the point where it feels as sheer masochism to read the series further. Please, Miss Phoenix, end this whole torture soon, because I just get more and more frustrated and exhausted.

The emotions are high on all sides; all the main characters are going through a wringer with Dante spiralling further into insanity, and Heather trying to save him and not let FBI, her father and the rest of bad guys use her against him. Add to it Von struggling against his superiors, angels inter fighting between themselves, treachery upon treachery and an impending apocalyptic doom and gloom... and On Midnight Wings is a very dark, depressing read, which would have been more bearable with a bit more positivity and good old humour.

I will try to finish this series, but at this point I'm not sure I will. ( )

2 ½ Stars
This was οne of my most awaited books of the year, but sadly it was a complete let down. ( )

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: I could not read more than five pages at a time without becoming frustrated and confused with On Midnight Wings. Some of this was due to the multiple points-of-view and awkwardly delivered flashbacks, but most of my issue was due to the fact that some stories are just too involved to jump into mid-series. Despite picking the book up several times in the past two months, I unfortunately found it impossible to finish and therefore don’t feel I can provide an adequate or fair review.

Opening Sentence: Lucien De Noir sat beside the unconscious girl curled on the bed, box springs creaking beneath him.

The Review:

As I stated in the “Quick & Dirty” above, I wasn’t able to finish On Midnight Wings. However, I’m not sure I would have found this story enjoyable given my issue with the writing style even if I had read the previous books in the series. Multiple character point-of-view, internal dialogue, flashbacks (delivered in present tense) and a tremendous reliance on a backstory without reference made it difficult to stay engaged – or even interested – in what’s supposed to be happening now.

The story opens immediately after the shooting and apparent kidnapping of Dante Baptiste and Heather Wallace. Dante has a lot of titles to his name – “creawdwr,” True Blood, Nightkind, Fallen, “Tee-Tee” … and frontman of a band called Inferno. He’s both powerful and mentally unstable thanks to this mixed heritage, capable of large scale destruction of the mortal, Vampire and Fallen worlds at only twenty-four years of age. He’s also the last survivor of Project Bad Seed – a black ops program which aimed to create sociopaths that could be used as weapons against the country’s enemies. Though he escaped from the program years before, the various groups who run the program want him back. There are several hidden agendas among the many players involved but the ultimate goal seems to be to use Dante’s own memories against him in order to finally – and completely – break him.

Lucien, Dante’s father, can’t let that happen. He knows that Heather is the only person who can prevent Dante from going over the edge to become the Great Destroyer (yet another title). Which is a double whammy since Lucien also can’t find Dante without Heather. The problem? Heather was kidnapped by her own father and placed in a psychiatric hospital in an unknown location. As Lucien and the other Nightkind members of Infernal try to track them both down, another issue arises with Heather’s younger sister. Could there be another half-breed in the making?

Obviously I don’t know how this book ends. I’m all for complicated plots with unique characters and creative world-building – all of which Phoenix seems to be more than capable of producing. However, like an avalanche gaining speed and collecting everything in its path, the story’s momentum makes it difficult to catch up and the writing style didn’t create any desire to make that happen. Still, I hope that my inability to finish On Midnight Wings won’t deter anyone interested in the series from picking it up! My only suggestion is to definitely start with A Rush of Wings (Book 1).

Notable Scene:

Bad-guy handcuffs for the angel who’d reeled her in like a lost kite from among the blazing stars when she’d floated away from her body.

Mommy turns on the TV in the motel in Oregon – the motel with the picture of a winking beaver chewing on a twig, outlined in glowing color – and is searching for the Cartoon Network when Violet hears the firecrackers pop-pop-popping outside in the parking lot. Hears the sound of breaking glass. Then her mommy’s scream, jagged and raw.

“My baby!”

Violet tries to tell Mommy that she’s okay, but she can’t. She just drifts up and away, leaving her body, with its wide, staring eyes and the new dark and bleeding hole above them; leaving behind her wailing mother, and wishing she could stay.

Then Dante catches her.

“Don’t kick him!” Violet raced across the room, her paper wings rustling at her back. Crouching beside Dante, she glared up at the orderlies. “Stop being so mean! Mr. Purcell and the doctors promised that they’d make him happy, promised that they’d take care –“

“Hush, sweetie, don’t you worry none,” one orderly, a man with curly brown hair and a name tag reading Joe, said. “He’s tough. He can take it, trust me.”

FTC Advisory: Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster provided me with a copy of On Midnight Wings. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy.
allthingsuf.com

With this fifth book in the series, The Maker’s Song has firmly changed focus from shadowy organizations to the boundless magic of vampire and Fallen kind. The last, sick machinations of the Shadow Bureau scramble to destroy Dante and Heather, but while past books were mired with too many agents and agencies, this time around the balance falls towards mystery and myth. Phoenix has written ON MIDNIGHT WINGS so that even those new to the series can jump in and get swept away in the action.

Despite the abundance of drama in this series, very little of it engenders real emotion for the characters. Five books of betrayal, flash after flash of the rape, torture, and abuse Dante suffered as a child, and always some shadowy organization plotting his death, activation, or downfall… a constant onslaught of doom is the norm for these characters. Drama to the point of melodrama, the comedic weight of opposition stacked against poor, damaged Dante finally crashes in this book. The endless repetition of child abuse and death that beats in Dante’s head coalesces from fragments into a whole, and while the last few chapters had me racing to finish, my biggest emotional reaction was hope that the images of rape and abuse that haunt Dante could finally rest in peace. No such luck, however. ON MIDNIGHT WINGS was my favorite of the series, but it is a transitional book, not a finale. Phoenix is turning Dante’s gaze from the real world to a celestial battle, and from here on out it looks like the violence will switch to a much larger scale.

Phoenix’s world is thick with betrayal and intrigue, and fans of the dark drama of Lilith Saintcrow’s Dante Valentine or J. R. Ward’s LOVER AWAKENED will have lots of pain and angst to enjoy. For myself, however, Dante Baptiste has so many characteristics it’s hard to see him as a character. Vampire, angel, sociopath, maker… in early books his myth smothered the story; he existed only as a reflection of others’ reactions. In this story, at long last, as the long foreshadowed secrets and events come to a crescendo, all I hoped for was an end. An end to Dante’s pain, and end to the government’s plots, and one last magical super nova to make all of this noise and angst worth it. ON MIDNIGHT WINGS certainly takes the story to a precipice, but I don’t think I’ll be following this series over the edge to completion.

Sexual Content: References to child abuse, rape, and sex. ( )