Angela Korra'ti

Unfallen Dead is a good strong installment in the Connor Grey novels by Mark Del Franco, advancing the storyline not only for the world at large, but also for the story arc about what happened to Connor to disable his druid abilities. More specifically, we’ve got ourselves a story where the Convergence, the great merging of the human and Faerie worlds a hundred years or so back, seems to be finally reversing itself. But Connor’s got his own issues; an underQueen of the Seelie Court is bent on interrogating him and Meryl Dian about the events at the tail end of the last story. And furthermore, Connor’s old Guild partner from New York, Dylan macBain, has shown up in town to fill in for Keeva macNeve, suspended from duty because of those same questionable events.

And just to add insult to injury, Dylan’s even got Connor’s old office.

It’s nice to be far enough along in the series arc at this point that we’re past Connor’s initial wave of resentment about his disability, and are moving on to him figuring out what it is and how to conquer it. There are events in the last act of this story that raise all sorts of interesting questions about what exactly happened to Connor, especially given how his nemesis Bergin Vize finally shows up on camera–in a state that Connor does not expect at all. But that’s only part of what he has to deal with from Vize, given that that elf’s bent on taking out the Seelie Court. Meanwhile, another fey is killing people and framing Meryl for the crime, giving Connor yet another challenge to juggle.

Good strong story over all and I’m looking forward to diving right into Book Four, now that it’s out. Four stars.

I swung into Unleashed, Book 3 of John Levitt’s Dog Days series, pretty much on the heels of Book 2. This was a very good way to read it, given that certain events from Book 2 have immediate ramifications for Book 3; in fact, Unleashed opens with Mason and Victor having to hunt down one of those dangling plot ends.

Much of this book’s plot, in fact, is dealing with ramifications of what happened in Book 2. A portal has been opened, you see–and the Ifrit Gone Wrong is not the only thing that’s come through. Something else has shown up in the city, and it’s able to imitate anyone. Even magical practitioners.

This time around as he’s trying to fix what’s gone wrong, we get to see Mason meet a pretty young psychic who is understandably shocked that there are people who can actually work magic in the world. She’s even more shocked when she starts having visions with troubling suggestions indeed for what’s about to happen to Mason, too. We also get a couple of new side characters we haven’t seen before, and you can probably guess from that what sort of role they’ll have in the plot; this was handled well enough, though, that I didn’t mind the obvious pointers in their directions.

What’s got the biggest possible ramifications for further books in this series, though, is the return of a character we’d thought dead as of Book 1. I won’t say who to avoid spoilers, but I’m hoping that what I read as hints that this character has also gone Wrong will bear fruit.

We’ll just have to see, because after two satisfying reads in this series, I’m definitely coming back for more. Four stars.

I was hoping that John Levitt’s Dog Days novels would sharpen up their act with Book 2, and I am pleased to say that I wasn’t disappointed. One of the biggest beefs I had with Book 1–our hero Mason’s friends’ annoying propensity to harp on him about what a slacker he is–was pretty much absent from this book. And there’s nice mileage with Mason making music here, and of course, plenty of cute not-really-a-dog mileage with his Ifrit, Lou.

In this installment the crime that has to be solved is the mysterious draining of life essence out of San Francisco practitioners–one of whom is one of Mason’s old girlfriends, Sarah. Mason and his colleagues Eli and Victor must figure out who’s responsible, and the fact that a known dark practitioner from Portland has recently moved into the city seems like a suspect on a silver platter. This is of course Too Easy. A suitably alert reader won’t have trouble figuring out who the perpetrator actually is, but a good bit of the substance of that revelation comes from Mason’s own reaction to it, so it’s okay.

Some of the side plots were the ones that were more interesting to me, though. Campbell, the healer from Book 1, makes another appearance here–and while I was initially disappointed to see her described as Mason’s ex at this point, things are clearly not really over between them, so I’m pleased on that account. There’s mileage with Victor having a potential steady love interest who actually contributes a bit to the plot, and it’s pretty neat just to see the most competent and badassed of Mason’s colleagues being a gay guy. There are new theories thrown around about where Ifrits come from, and in fact, there are intriguing attempts to make new Ifrits that go horribly, horribly wrong and which have ramifications clear into Book 3.

Good fun overall. Four stars.