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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Solid Second in the Series!, September 8, 2006
This story moves from a single story line to a couple or three parallel ones and from there it kind of turns into a river delta with multiple tributaries of story winding this way and that are related, but meandering into areas where we can't quite see around the next bend. Certainly Cunningham wants to keep us around and needs loads of characters who are not yet fully developed to continue pulling off this series...I suspect that we will NOT be seeing the ocean where all these individual tributaries pour for some time yet.
We start out with Gwen, continued story from the fist book in this series (Shadows in the Darkness) where a bust has gone bad, cops were killed, her mentor died under suspicious circumstances (deemed an accident, but Gwen believes it was murder). We are reintroduced to a lot of characters from the first book, each of whom is multi-layered and comes from a seemingly remarkable background and each of whom (with very few exceptions) seems to have an ulterior motive or secret agenda going on at cross grains to the current story (this is where I assume the author is building up credibility for various story lines for additional books down the line).
We have Gwen who is a remarkable woman...but not really a woman, a changeling, an elf, something she's only just found out about herself and is struggling to come to terms with throughout this book. We get her long time lesbian, lawyer friend, complete with jealous lover and a psycho controlling Ex, whose new wife turns up missing. We also have the African-American male "partner" who happens to come from a long line of "gifted" individuals and a plethora of male characters who are all vying for her attention in one way or another and claiming to want to help her...in the end, who's really on her side? That's what makes this series quite the page turner...you just have to know what the next twist in the plot is going to be!
The one quibble I have is that no one really has any trouble with her "abilities," every character seems to have a bend over backwards acceptance of what she can do without much curiosity or desire for explanation...to me this is the opposite of what happens in say Hooper's books where the incredulousness goes on and on and on until you think you're going to have to throw the book at the wall...this is the other extreme. Everyone is shocked, but no one really says anything or is suspicious of what she can do. Overall it's a small quibble, and I can live with it.
In Gwen we get a feisty, touch, kick-a** heroine, bent on finding out the truth - and that's quite a feat considering she was disgraced as a cop in the previous novel and now makes her living as a P.I. We find out where she is willing to compromise her principles and where she isn't and ultimately, for every question that is answered about the cases she's working on, more and more is alluded to about her own parents death and the more questions we are left with as a result. So, really we learn a lot in this book...but at the same time, we learn so very little. The author is certainly mysterious about the "Qualities" of both Gwen and those like her, about the lives of the "Elder Race," frankly, there are so many facets to this story that it's hard to keep track of them all, but it does make imagining where Cunningham will take this story as she weaves each new world for us to dive into quite fun! This one is fast paced and leaves many possibilities for the future...I, for one, am looking forward to the next one in this series!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gwen kick ass Elf, April 26, 2006
Gwen's dealing with the new knowledge that she's of the Elder Race and trying to learn as she goes along. A new friend is killed, a new friend brings her into his family, another new friend isn't what he seems to be.
Ian shows her what an elven oath means and takes away her ability to eat french fries. Elves can be cruel. ;^) So if someone asks you to swear a oath "by moon and star, wind and word" beware what you say.
Hopefully in the third book we'll learn more about the 'Qualities' that the Elder Race have. Better yet that this isn't just a trilogy but the making of a series.
For those of you uptight about sex - Gwen does have sex - once. Nothing like the Anita Blake sex scenes so shouldn't be any compliants.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Didn't live up to the first book's promise, April 27, 2007
This review is from: Shadows in the Starlight (Changeling Detective Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)
I loved the first book, "Shadows in the Darkness" four years ago.
What happened? The book started off with a bang. A young female ME was murdered in a heinous and cruel manner. Then we wait til page 150 to have someone find the body? That was the sole point of the ME. Cunningham let the lady 'talk' and get us to like her, then she killed her. Then we have to wait several days after the heart-rending beginning for the ME to be found. While this is definitely 'real' in the case of crime-solving, the problem is, Cunningham set up a thriller and she certainly did not deliver.
While this is a sequel, I think a little less time mentioning the previous cases would be a good idea. The book second doesn't have to rehash the first in a series to carry on continuity. The jacket tells you pretty much what you need to know.
Further--without spoiling the end, situations do not get better for our heroine. I love serial fiction that addresses a problem in the main book and solves that problem but leaves some teaser threads for us to look forward to later. Cunningham's end just read 'hopeless' to me, reminding me very much of why I don't read the old-line fantasy that doesn't stand alone. The epilogue made me want to throw the stinking book against the wall. If you want to read some of the best stand-alone serial fiction in urban fantasy, try Carrie Vaughn's "Kitty" books, C. E. Murphy's "Walker Papers", and Vicki Petterssen's "Signs of the Zodiac."
Finally, it's often interesting to have multiple points of view in a novel, but if I'd written this story I would not have the antagonist as one of the novels' point of view characters, but in the case of a mystery we need a bit more opacity because quite often the antagonist has given the answer long before our good guy (or in this case, girl) can figure it out.
I really regret buying this book, because I genuinely enjoyed the first and was looking forward to the sequel. I won't be buying the third.
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