This is an Urban Fantasy novel that avoids many of the pitfalls of the genre, though I was worried at first that the MC (Lochlan Nohr) was a heavy Gary Stu type MC. All the ladies like him, and he doesn't seem to be bad at anything. That ends up having a sensible reason for being the case, though, and later in the story, he certainly doesn't have all the answers and he gets in over his head. Lochlan ends up being a relatable character with no small amount of empathy.
The novel begins as though it might be a crime novel or a thriller, but before Lochlan (or the reader) knows it, the fantasy aspects gradually accumulate until even the shape of the world is in question. I'm a big fan of how certain characters are presented at face value at first, only to acquire a completely different reality later in the story that both makes sense, but has never been obvious. The world is presented in first person, so the reader only unravels the deeper meanings as the character does, and I'm already wondering if—should I go back and reread the opening half—there might be some little clues that would have given away those deeper meanings had I been looking for them.
I need to be frank about something else. My life has been almost impossibly busy and many indie novels I've begun have been DNF'd because they just aren't good enough or compelling enough to keep reading. This novel bucks that trend. There's action early on, but not so much that you're being asked to care about people you don't know. To me, the build is perfect, and by the time you get to the halfway point, the book has so much momentum that I absolutely had to keep reading. This is probably the first book I've finished reading this quickly.
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