Kate has now magically claimed the city of Atlanta – in direct
opposition to her father, Nimrod, the Builder of Towers. She and Curran, the
former Beast Lord of Atlanta, have also left the Pack and are trying to build a
new life and home in the suburbs. It’s a lot of changes to get used to.
And they have no time to get used to it - not with an ancient and powerful being
awakening in the city, one that may be immune to Kate’s magic and whose power
is growing after every terrifying event
And Curran has a project – the Mercenary’s Guild is
falling apart and he is determined to get it back in shape. Whether they want
it or not.
This is my happy book face.
It’s a combination of sheer glee that I got to read a
book this awesome, utter depression that it is now over and an undercurrent of
exhaustion because I was up all night and nothing short of heavy weapons would
make me put this book down. That is my happy book face
I actually pick up a new Kate Daniels book with a little bit of trepidation because I expect
this to be the one to disappoint me – my expectations for this series are so
high that eventually I will slam into a huge wall of disappointment
I thought this book would be that wall, after all, so
much changed in the last book: They’ve left the Pack, Kate has established
herself much more as a power, everyone knows who she is and Roland – that big
mysterious bad who has overshadowed the whole series, has become directly involved
rather than some shadowy, potential evil. That’s a lot of changes.
Thankfully all of those changes worked so well and made
me take back a lot of my misgivings. I was, originally, little irritated by
Kate and Curran leaving the Pack; but here we see not just Kate leaving the
Pack to protect them but Curran underlining that he also left the Pack because
the Pack failed him. This is something that has developed over the series in a
wonderfully subtle way – both Kate and Curran, while fighting for others and
epicly sacrificing for others, have also established that it’s ok to make room
for yourself, to demand your own happiness. Kate has grown to let people into
her life, to love Curran and her friends, even though it puts them at risk from
Roland and goes against everything her surrogate father taught her. And here we
see Curran turn to the Pack - the Pack he has worked for, sacrificed for,
battled for and risked everything for – and say “you failed me”. Curran has
turned round and said that, yes, he deserves better than how the Pack treated
him and Kate – and he walked away. No ridiculous over-the-top-martyrdom we see
so often in the genre (though they do risk and sacrifice a lot), but firmly
saying “no, there’s a limit. I did all this for you, I deserve better than
this.” Curran and Kate’s walking away was not just about protecting the Pack
but about asserting their own worth and value
