Review: Non-Stop Action Urban Fantasy -- but read the previous book
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 13, 2012
This is an urban fantasy book with a lot of violence (although no sex).  The book picks up shortly after the previous book (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea).  I had read the previous book and it made this book much richer - I do think that while you could read this book without the previous one, not understanding much of the backstory would detract from this book.  Nicki Slobodian is an "abnormal" as she can see ghosts; her father was a famous abnormal in that he could summon demons.  In this world, abnormals are discriminated against by the "New Government" (they are put on a registry, can't hold jobs, etc). The previous book was about Nicki stopping her father from summoning a really bad demon.  In this book, Nicki is trying to track down people who belong to "The Blood" (they drink Angel Blood referred to as "Angelwine").  We also find out several things from the previous book were not what Nicki thought and she learns more about her father and his friends.  The book ends with some unanswered items and foreshadowing of what is coming but does NOT end with a big cliffhanger.This was a very fast-paced book with a lot of adventure.  In fact, Nicki would have been completely exhausted from everything she went through during this book!  The story is very action-driven; thus, if you don't like that type of story, you may not care for this book. Since the story was so action driven, I felt there was a lot missing on the various backstories (how did The Blood come about?  How did they learn about Angelwine?  How could they capture Angels?  Why did the blood give them special abilities?  Etc).  A lot of information was thrown at us (The Blood, The Morrigan, the One War, Angelwine) without a lot of explanation.  That is the reason that I knocked off one star from my review.I liked Nicki a lot from the previous book and her character was generally consistent in this book. Regarding the supporting characters, sometimes I wish that we could have slowed down a bit and get more information on her caster (Eli) or the new police commissioner.  I missed seeing Sofie (her grandmother) in this book as I felt that Sofie gave her more heart in the previous book.Overall, while I wish there had been more information on various aspects of the story and the supporting characters, I really enjoyed reading about Nicki and will gladly wait for the next in the series.