Review: Finally, an installment that ends on only a semi-cliffhanger
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 21, 2014
Warning: This review might contain what some people consider SPOILERS.Rating: 8/10PROS:- The plot continues to be good: little details are revealed piece by piece so that the larger picture comes together slowly and creates a nice dramatic buildup.- Hawk is doing an excellent job of melding the characters’ voices so that Gray sounds more like Caleb with each story and Caleb sounds more like Gray. They are very obviously becoming one entity.- We finally get to see a development in the relationship that I’ve been waiting to see for a while now, and the payoff (read: sex scene) is worth the wait.- I really like the pacing of this author’s writing. There’s enough focus on detail to build an adequate amount of tension, but not so much detail that I ever find myself bored with any one scene. Even in the scenes that are long, there are a lot of different things going on, so the exposition is constantly moving along.CONS:- For the most part, Hawk does a good job of catching her readers up on the main details from earlier books in the series--which is important in a serial story, when each volume ends on a cliffhanger and there are months between the publishing dates of each installment. However, there are some references with almost no background explanation (example: “He saw us fight the wendigo”) that I remembered only vaguely because it had been several months and many books since I had read the prior installment.- Overall, there’s a bit more drama in this one than I remember in the previous volumes. Caleb and John are separated for much of the story, and tension (related to various plot points) just builds and builds without much reprieve until the *very* end.Overall comments: I think the bottom line here is that if you like the earlier stories, you’ll like this one. Gray is still amusing, the plot is still intriguing, and the characters are still likeable. I don’t feel that the series is growing stale, but I won’t lie and say that the serial nature of it doesn’t bother me. It’s a great story arc, but I’m growing weary of all the cliffhangers. I’d much rather read it as a novel all together.