2025 paranormal fantasy, last of a nine-book series. Lorelei is in
supernatural prison, and her boyfriend is being tortured by Lucifer in
person. How to give everyone a happy ending?
Which is perhaps a little harsh, but the pacing is very obvious:
this is the book in which all the questions are answered and any
setbacks are only temporary and minor. And when you've established as
the baseline of your fantasy universe that any god from any culture is
potentially real, well, it's hard to generate tension: you can always
pull another one out of the mythology cupboard with the powers that
you need to solve the next bit of plot.
And during a break-in, passing mention of a "power vent" and a "supply
duct" (both of which our heroes can sneak along) just seems like word
salad.
There is at least an acceptance that eternal conscious torture might
not be a very good idea, even if the Christian god is mysteriously off
the page even while Lucifer is still on it.
But all the nascent relationships have to become actual, the ghosts
have to reach their own resolution, and there's generally a fair old
bit of tidying up to do before we reach the Last Battle of All (and
it's not even Ragnarok). And while something on this scale shouldn't
feel anticlimactic, it does end up being just another battle of the
sort this series has given us before.
Obviously I wasn't in any doubt that our heroes would prevail. But I
was still interested in how they'd get there, and there rarely seemed
any tension to that either. This was an enjoyable read, but never an
exciting one, and it felt as though it really should have been.
Perhaps I was unreasonable in hoping for more. There's an interesting
cosmology here and one can easily imagine more stories set in the
universe, but there's never quite the feeling of truly epic events;
the stories of the two ghosts have more emotional impact than the
destiny of worlds.
This was a series with its ups and downs anyway, and I may seek out
more by Chase, but all in all I felt the ending would have done better
if it had risen to match its subject matter.