Crone's Moon

In this book it's Felicity, Rowan's wife, who is communicating with the dead. Not only is she seeing what they see and hearing what they hear, she's experiencing what they experience. Right down to the burn marks appearing on her body. They fade quickly, but the memory doesn't. As the symptoms worsen, Rowan is desperate to find the latest victim, not only to save her but to save his wife.

#5 in the Rowan Gant ‘paranormal’ mystery series featuring the Wiccan computer geek/sleuth and his friend Ben Storm, St. Louis policeman as well as Felicity O’Brien, Rowan’s wife. This book is pretty much the same plot from the previous four books re-hashed—a serial killer is loose, this one taking young, pretty women, torturing them and then in a little twist, beheading them. Rowan and Felicity become involved when Rowan and Ben, on their way to lunch, witness the abduction of one of the victims, who turns out to be none less than the mayor’s daughter. Actually Rowan had been involved earlier, when he woke up on the floor having had one of his seizures—he just didn’t realize at the time what it was about. Rowan and show more Felicity both end up channeling the victims and having their otherworldly seizures in this one, and once again are sometimes in grave mortal peril, with the clock ticking as the victims try to lead them to their resting place and/or where they’re being held. Ben and FBI agent Constance Mandalay again are bucking procedure, acting outside of the lead detective’s wishes by allowing Rowan and Felicity to assist them, and Lt. Albright, aka “Bible Barb” once again is riding their tails with scorn and derision.

While being quite a seat-of-your-pants thriller, since I’ve already read the first few books in the series, I was pretty sure of what was going to happen and I was right. I do enjoy the Pagan aspects of the book and it’s refreshing to have openly Pagan protagonists, and as much as I’ve come to love Rowan and Felicity and Ben, I do wish the plot would vary a little from book to book and that they would find something different to occupy the pages. It’s also a very graphically violent book, and not for the faint of heart—and I’m not faint of heart, but again, it’s just a lot of ‘same old, same old’ from previous books. I understand the next three books are a trilogy within the series that feature Felicity more, so maybe something different will come of them. I’ve got them all here, so I will read them, but if it’s ‘more of the same’ I’ll most likely end up leaving a year or more between reading each book…had I read all these at one time, I’d have likely not continued what with the marked similarity between them all, which leads to predictability of the outcome. show less

Review located at http://lupabitch.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/crones-moon-mr-sellars/