Review: Another fun read from the Detective Marcella series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 29, 2013
From my Goodreads account:This is a fun paranormal series that I have definitely enjoyed.  Kudos to Donovan for creating fully developed characters who remind you of real people you know.  He has a real knack for putting these characters in the most amazing situations, yet the reader is able to completely suspend belief and buy it all.  For me, this is because those characters react exactly as I would expect real flesh-and-blood people to react in similar situations. His plotting moves you smoothly from one scene to the next.This book was, to me, markedly different than the others.  There was no great mystery to solve, and even the seek & rescue mission seemed to be less the point of the story than the interaction of the characters.  Pretty much the whole pantheon of characters is back, Tony, of course, (It is a Tony Marcella mystery after all!), Lilith, Carlos, Dominic (although he has a very small part in this one), Ursula, even Leona and the once-vanquished Dr. Lowell.  Add in a storyline that takes place in another dimension, replete with other-worldly characters, such as malodytes, alphadytes, moss mites, chawdogs and drigets, and you have a fun and exciting romp through a never-neverland.To a certain degree, however, I felt the solutions to the situations the characters faced were a bit too simple, too easy.  All but the last one.  It will be fun to see how Donovan resolves that in the next episode, due out in the fall of 2013.For all that I love this series and plan to keep reading it as long as Donovan writes it, there are a few things that make me crazy.I think I've complained before about spelling/wrong word use.  I really thought I was going to get through this book without running into any of that.  In the first 3/4 of the book, there were a couple of iffy places, but with the many different styles of speaking used by the characters, I was never really sure if it was a mistake, or just a peculiarity of the character.  Then I hit this in chapter 21, second paragraph (location 5592, 78% on your Kindle):"Still, with thirty-foot high walls, guard towers on each corner and a genuine mote to contend with, I knew we'd have our work cut out for us."Really?  This castle has a "mote" instead of a "moat?"  I thought it just an oversight, but then, it appears again at location 5633 (same chapter), making me do this:  <facepalm>.  And, it appears again at location 6122 (86%, chapter 23), making me do this:  <headdesk>.  I think this is just a matter of relying on spellcheck to proof the manuscript -- correct spelling of "mote," just the wrong word to describe a water-filled ditch surrounding a castle.  I got further proof of that hypothesis in chapter 23, at position 6082 (85%), when we see this:'I let in to him. "What do you mean no, Jackass?...."She let in to him?  I think what would be correct would be "lit into him."  Again, using that spellcheck and hoping it saw that these three words, although properly spelled, weren't the correct usage in the context.And I'm not sure what happened here, at 6288 (88%):  "In truth, I was spiting Dominic, showing him that he didn't own her.  I let her come to a place she didn't belong, just to keep her from the person she did."  Huh?  Okay, I know what was meant, but that sure was awkward.Why does this type of thing make me so crazy?  Because it makes me stop and step out of the story, losing that in-the-midst-of-the-action feeling that is the reason people read novels.  For instance, for my money, the best line in the book -- and one I intend to use myself! -- contained this misspelling:  "I ran like the preverbal witch with her broomstick on fire."  Sigh.  Proverbial.  But, hey, I love that visual and plan to use the line at my first opportunity!So, if you love fantasy, if you love paranormal, if you love fun, wise-cracking, smart-mouthed characters, you'll love this book.  However, I'd recommend you read the series from the beginning -- there's so much back story to know, and this far along, you can't get it all from a single piece of the puzzle.