This book basically follows Victoria as she becomes a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Paranormal and hunts down a murderer.

I’m going to start by saying I don’t have a lot of experience with urban/paranormal books. I’ve been branching out to them lately and have found that I can enjoy them so long as they have the right tone. In my limited experience, I’ve never run across a world such as the one in this book where the monsters are out in plain view, actual citizens. They usually skulk in the shadows, and only a few know about them and kill them. In this book, there’s vampires and lycanthropes, witches and sorceresses and sorcerers. The normal humans know about their existence, and the paranormal has recently been accepted, so to speak. They are still feared, but the witch hunting and vampire staking is dwindling. The division Victoria joins is there to help these paranormals with crimes against them. It was an interesting take. Now, I’m not a fan of the standard vampire and werewolf monsters. I feel they’ve been overdone. I feel I haven’t seen/read anything new. The creatures in this book don’t strike me as completely unique, but I did enjoy the story despite the standard. The nuances introduced helped me stomach it all.

As for the characters, I wasn’t in love with Victoria, which made it slightly challenging because it’s written in first person. I didn’t hate her, just didn’t really connect to her. She’s supposed to be a sassy girl with a harsh past. In the paranormal community, she’s a legend of sorts. I like sassy. I like legend. But to me she came across more haughty. Instead of her hard life haunting her, she seemed to throw it out there for attention. Perhaps I’m used to my characters brooding a bit more, holding their pasts closer, hoarding all that pain. When she would mention a horror from her past or anything about her abilities, she would congratulate herself when she scored shock from her audience. It’s a nit picky thing, but one that got on my nerves. I think I would have liked her more if she wasn’t so proud of how people reacted.

As for the other characters, I found Trey extremely likable. A good guy at heart and a badass werewolf. We’re given hints that he’s got a dominant side to him, though we’re not shown. Kinda wish I’d seen him go crazy badass. Honestly, he’s the reason I’ll return to this series. The other characters were a bit blended, but this is the first in the series. I’m hoping future books really make them stick out from one another.

I found a good amount of typos. Unfortunately, this got really bogged down by redundancy. I knew Trey was affectionate because he was a werewolf. I didn’t need to hear about it every chapter. Victoria was constantly giving herself “brownie points” which stuck out more often than it should have, probably adding to the reasons I didn’t love her.

Overall, this review might sound negative but I do think I’ll pick up the next book. I’m curious enough about the world and the characters to give the series another go. If you’re a diehard paranormal/urban fantasy reader, I’d recommend giving this a try.

Vitoria Novak is in a fight for her life and a fight to find her place in this world!
Raised by vampires from the age of three, Victoria Novak is apprenticed by Shadow. Under his tutorage she develops her skill as an enforcer who takes out rogue vampires. In Shadow's absence, the coven master tries to force her to kill a vampire for personal reasons, and she refuses. She goes into hiding--complete hiding. She lives in the normal world and hides her abilities and takes a new name. But when the feds recruit her for the new FPD, she loses her anonymity, and finds a way to use her skills for good.
Our heroine, known as The Sorceress, is smart and funny and powerful. Love books with a strong female lead.
This is an action-packed novel. The author has created her own unique world of paranormal/ normal coexistence. It's such a fun book, and the plot absolutely keeps you wanting more until the end. It's not a soft, romantic book. If you like paranormal books, with murders and evil characters and non-stop action, in which you can cheer for the good guy (or girl, in this case), you'll love this book.
The ending is great, with no cliff-hanger, but you'll want to buy the next one. (I did!)

Havoc's cry takes place in a world much like ours, but paranormals have come out of the wood work and are living amongst humans. The author went to great lengths to build a complex paranormal world and clearly defined a variety of types of paranormals, the kinds of powers they had, even a bit of a hierarchy amongst them based on their strength and power (though this might be hotly debated amongst the paranormals themselves!). I appreciated the level of detail and thought that went into defining the paranormals of this world.

The protagonist, Tor, had a great dry wit and sarcastic approach that I liked and found very relatable. The story was good, the primary plot being the need to solve a string of brutal murders, with the political dynamics of a werewolf tribe driving the subplot. I thought both story lines were interesting and compelling.

That said, the heavy exposition throughout the book really slowed the storyline down for me. There are large sections where the characters are all standing around getting lectured by the protagonist about paranormals which frequently became boring for me. I personally prefer information like this be shown instead of told by using the action and unrolling of the story to reveal it rather than through lecture.

While I liked Tor, for the most part, I found the other characters to be little more than straw-men, figures for Tor to talk to and tease with but none of whom had any real value to the story outside of being props for the protagonist. I really enjoy character driven stories and I found this to be a little disappointing. Havoc's Cry is definitely more of a plot driven story.

If you enjoy the paranormal, and particularly if you enjoy plot driven stories, I'd say pick up Havoc's Cry and give it a read. If you prefer stories that are more character driven this might not be the story for you.