2024 paranormal fantasy, fourth of a nine-book series. Lorelei
has, as she feared, drawn the wrong sort of attention.
Now that's a recovery. Book 3 seemed to be going wholeheartedly
into the whole divine power thing in a distressingly unconvincing way,
but here Lorelei is still trying not to be blatant about her powers.
At the same time, there clearly is a huge supernatural effect being
worked on the town — it involves people who are proud of themselves
suddenly exploding, and that's just for a start — and she's going to
have to do something about it…
And keeping this on a basically human, or at least human with special
powers, scale, is what's keeping my interest: Lorelei and her friends
are real people with real problems, and Chase is retaining that sense
even as the power level gets escalated.
All right, during the research phases I was getting a definite
impression of mid-series Kate Daniels (where the flow seemed to be
find out what's going on, do research on what that creature is like,
then fight it), but that's not a bad thing to emulate.
The Inevitable Romance doesn't impress, mostly because it gives me a
feeling of being put in because this kind of book needs a romance. I'm
normally one to cheer for the protagonists having to juggle falling in
love along with everything else, but here it felt more perfunctory. I
hope that may change later on if/when the relationship gets beyond the
casual misunderstanding and hate you forever stage.
I'm not entirely convinced by gods of multiple ancient cultures being
crammed into the template of the seven deadly sins, explicitly
Christian and only laid out in that form in 590 CE by Pope Gregory I.
But the setup does turn out to have been produced by the series'
Shadowy Antagonist, so fair enough, it's the sort of assumption of
cultural supremacy that would be in character for them to make.
Definitely an improvement over book 3, and I'll carry on with the
series for now.