RogerBW's Blog

2014 urban fantasy, thirteenth in the series. A side story in which Cormac, the mercenary monster hunder turned ally of Kitty Norville, tracks down a historical murder and runs into some old contacts. Spoilers.

Even talking about Cormac's personal situation is something of a spoiler for earlier books: yes, he's out of prison and finally finishing his parole, but he's still sharing his mind with a dead 19th-century witch.

That's the more interesting part of the book, to me: the relationship between Cormac and Amelia, the things they have in common and the places where they differ. Fortunately for me, the plot is there to show that off; the stakes are mostly low, and nothing's stopping Cormac from walking away except curiosity. Yeah, all right, the First Girl He Ever Loved shows up, but mostly to show the reader how he's really no longer the kid he was back then.

You know, he thought to Amelia, nobody says spinster anymore.

Well, yes, certainly. Etymologically, the word was doomed, considering so few of the women called spinsters actually spun wool anymore. So what do people call unmarried adult women now?

Um. Women, he said.

Ah.

The actual plot… well, it's militia people who've decided that having a pet wizard on their side is a good thing, fighting other militia people; and there's an ancient relic in the background. It's hard to take seriously among the world-shaking stuff of the previous books, but Cormac really doesn't try, and that's very effective; he has his own reasons for arriving and his own reasons for leaving.

Yes, all right, this is really a spin-off more than it is a novel in the main plot; it barely advances the overall plot at all. (I gather there were plans to write more after the main series had ended, but this doesn't seem to have happened.) If you enjoyed reading about Cormac in earlier books, this is more of his story, and that works well.