I was hesitant about going into this book. I loved the Kate Daniels series, despite all its faults, because the world is so rich and interesting. But taking a character who is a minor at the end of the 10-book series and aging them up to fit into a relationship with their childhood crush who's five years older than her? Yeah, I was a little hesitant.


So here's what I liked:

I love the world. GOD, do I love the world. I love the concepts, the political structures, the characters and the type of people that have survived in this magical apocalypse. I probably will never stop loving it. I am also very glad I don't live in it, because unless I became a shifter or a wizard or something to augment my strength, this world would hand me my ass and I am VERY aware of it.

I actually thought the Derek/Julie stuff was well handled. Like I said, I was kind of concerned about it and I was actually pretty glad that they didn't just magically make up and get together. I'm much happier getting to see them work it out as adults.

The plot was great. I actually really enjoyed the concept of Julie facing off against a prophecy and a god-made-flesh. The writing was fun and it was so great to see old characters living their best life.


Here's what I didn't like:

Why. Why the fuck did you have to make her magically, perfectly beautiful? Literally what purpose does it serve? I hate it. It underscores the whole, "You have to be traditionally beautiful to be loved!" thing and it's one of my big complaints that I have with Ilona Andrews's books. You do not have to be perfect and skinny to be loved or bad ass or attractive. It also serves absolutely no purpose in the plot aside from making the character look different - which easily could have been done without making her look like a god damn model. Ilona Andrews, my dudes, it is okay to have heroines who are just normal looking people.

The way Ascanio Ferara is used as a political intrigue point in this book is criminal. He goes from a teenage heartthrob to... a politically motivated douchebag who has a loose grasp of acceptable morality because he wants to jump the queue and become Beast Lord? Really? I always kind of liked the thought of Ascanio maturing and becoming a more decent person who might be worthy of Julie, so I feel like his transformation in the other way is supposed to underscore that Derek is the only man for Julie. Even if he wasn't gonna get together with Julie, which I'm fine with, I would have liked to get more introspection into him aside from his becoming a minor villain. (I'm predicting that Derek's gonna become Beast Lord anyway in future books, so I'm expecting this to continue. Not thrilled about that either.)

The recapping was a little annoying. And consistent. I get that this is to help new readers to be able to get into the books easier without them having to read the original 10 books, but it was pretty regular that they had to go fix things.

Would I recommend it? Sure. Is it the best book in the series? Absolutely not.