I had a lot of pauses during the reading of this novel. Mostly, that's on me, because I'm struggling to maintain my focus on anything these days. But I found myself setting the book down whenever Rachel got in a snit, trying to use assumptions as proof. I couldn't yell at her, but I could go do something else and ignore her for a while. For someone with her skills, she is very impulsive and difficult to reason with.
Poor Ivy gets kicked around in this installment and Rachel is both brave and compassionate in her care of her friend. Ivy gets the best of her attention. Her putative boyfriend, Nick, gets unintentionally abused when Rachel performs a new spell with unexpected consequences and when she draws power through their link. Needless to say, their relationship is strained by this, as well as by their joint association with a demon (whom they refer to as Big Al). My prediction is that Nick won't remain her boyfriend for long. Rachel and her arch-enemy, Trent Kalamack, talk smack, admire each other, and flirt altogether too much for this to remain an adversarial situation. I'd say they are on their way to a torrid affair of some kind.
Meanwhile, Rachel is building her base. If Ivy isn't an even better friend after this, she's an ungrateful vampire. The pixie, Jenks, is still firmly on Rachel's team, along with his family. Nick is still linked to her by magic, but may be on his way out, if they can find a way to reverse the binding. Now, however, the FIB, in the persons of Edden and Glenn, are pleased to be associated with her. Even Trent seems to want to spend time with her.
The demon is a lingering problem, but we need a hook to encourage us to read the next book, don't we? Will Ivy recover? Can Nick and Rachel sever their binding? Will Trent supersede Nick in Rachel's affections? Once I punch through a bunch of library books, I'll grab volume three to find out. Wish me better luck with my attention span!
Book number 476 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project
No comments:
Post a Comment