Someone has been murdered – and the police think vampires
are involved. The vampire houses are only just enjoying a surge of popularity,
the last thing they need is bad press now…
Especially since Ethan has made a play to take over the
Greenwich Prisidium. After so long of them being a constant threat to Cadogan
house, he’s determined to replace that corrupt leadership – but the testing is
difficult, dangerous and gruelling and highly competitive. And some of those
competitors are willing to use Ethan’s past to make him bow out – and drive a
wedge between him and Merit
And speaking of that GP leadership – Darius, king of the
GP, is in town. And he’s acting… oddly.
There were two or three storylines in this book (Darius
wandering around up to shenanigans and the creation of a new leader for GP may
be seen as one following the other or the same storyline) – and I’m kind of
torn over them. They’re all pretty independent of one another, there’s a vague
link, but they’re tangentially connected at best – and I’m not sure about any
of them
Take the murder mystery – now that’s actually the most
interesting and meaty storyline which takes the most effort to solve and the
most room in the book. But it’s also the one with the least impact – it’s a murder mystery, it involves
the relative of someone who is somewhat friendly with Cadogan House (I didn’t
recognise his name, but we’re assured he said nice things about vampires once)
and it’s… mundane. Honestly, when merit and Ethan are called in on the first
murder and they declare “actually, it’s nothing to do with vampires because X”
I don’t see why they were called in again. Why call in an expert who has
already ruled out their expertise? Especially when they have other things to
worry about? Merit isn’t police –in fact, since they and Catcher ruled out any
kind of woo-woo at all I don’t even get why the Ombudsman’s involved, let alone
the vampires. What were they doing at these crime scenes? Why did the police
keep calling them in? What was Merit supposed to add to the investigation? Why was
this plot line even here?
The problem is that without that plot line we don’t have
much else. We have Darius, head of the GP in town doing odd things of oddness.
Which Ethan, Merit & co investigate, work on and solve very very quickly.
Even the end resolve turns out to be super neat, super easy and not require
them to do anything. This could have been a meaty storyline, instead it wasn’t –
it was a brief throwaway to prove the point that Ethan and Cadogan House get
involved helping people even when they have no obligation to do so – which we
kind of already knew. If it had been more involved, the solution required more
work etc then maybe – but it didn’t. It was a couple of chapters of distraction
Which lead us to Ethan’s bid to become leader of the
Greenwich Prisidium. This should have been the meat of the story but, again,
wasn’t. The tests were dramatic and important – but involved Ethan far more
than Merit which meant she – and we – weren’t even spectators for the first one
– we just knew it happened. The second test, the grand physical challenge, was
something we were there for – but it was so simple and quick. I actually
blinked and skipped back to make sure my book wasn’t missing, say, 50 pages
where the actual test was. I was amazed how brief it was and how quickly
addressed.
