I want to slap this one with 2-stars and walk away, but I know that I'm not going to do that, because this series is a plate of fries covered in gravy and cheese curds. It's a bad, yet delicious idea; it's going to give me a freaking heart attack; but godamn is it good going down.As a novel, this book is simply a disaster, but it's book three in a five book series, so it's almost guaranteed to be a mess. This book is the pivot on which I assume the series turns - I do not have the advantage of hindsight right now - and the way it turns is in a freaking egregious godamn cliffhanger.
I just went searching for a funny cliffhanging image, and this is what caught my fancy:
I admit this had absolutely nothing to do with the book. But it's still objectively funny.
Anyway, back to my point, which is what a hot mess this all is. Structurally, this book is a freaking nightmare. Mac, our protagonist from the first two books, is trying to bring some vengeance for the death of her sister, and also managing an expanding cast of characters, some of which are murderous fairy folk who want to do humanity in, and some of which are murderous human folk who want to do the fairy in, and some are who the frak knows. The plot of the first half of the book is her calling people, having some meetings, taking showers, missing her appointments, and going to the godamn tropics. Despite the wholly insanely freaking car crashing badness of how this information is relayed, the mythology has gotten so godamn interesting. Seriously, plate of fries with gravy and cheese curds - totally murderously filling.
Then it starts going down the well. Armageddon! Rape! Murder! Rioting! Complete and total subsuming darkness! I keep hoping for more darkness, because I'm a sick, sick puppy, and Moning dishes it out in spades. There's this great passage, right before the dark curtain drops over freaking everything, where Mac talks about the word "liminal" - that period that is not one thing or the other - the held-breath before the action - and how awful that is. You wake up, shower, clip your toe nails, but the movements are mechanical - a series of meetings that you've made appointments for, but that will never happen the way you've planned. That's the book - the held-breath before the exhale, which makes your lungs leap as you try to hold it in, but the breath with out.
And it starts to come out, the breath, in the final moments, but, curse you, Moning, it just hangs there in the air. Here it comes...