Review: A wonderful first book to a fantasy series
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 18, 2014
P.L. Blair's Portals series is a fresh mixture of old mythology and magic as well as modern day crime fighting. In a world where the Portals have been reopened between Earth and The Otherside, humans now find themselves dealing with Pixies (not your happy Tinkerbell), Ogres, and Trolls along with the generally more friendly Elves, Practitioners, and Wizards.  This first novel has Kat (a human) and Tevis (an Elf) working as partners with the Corpus Christi Police Department. When a pattern links several murders together, they find themselves having to confront a part of Tevis's past to solve a mystery and keep the world(s) safe.The intertwining of modern and magic is done so well that the least believable part of this book is the Scarborough Renaissance Festival, which has a few discrepancies regarding the length of the faire, and the types of people working together at it!  I twitched during the scenes (17 years working at faires led me to have a few twitch moments when the description of the faire in the book differed so much from the actual faire... I mean, you show up at Cannon, aka Opening/10am, and you only have to walk a quarter mile or less from your car to the gate?  That's magic by itself!) but once I stopped twitching and got past the faire scenes, the entire rest of the book was great.  P.L. Blair really knows how to mix the humor in while leaving the book serious when necessary.Disclaimer: I receive a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The only issue I have is with the ren faire section, and that's not enough to mark down any stars since this is a fantasy novel!