Author: Solidarity_

Genre: Action/Fantasy

What I liked about this book:

The writing itself here is actually really decent.

Johnson as a character has a hell of a voice and a really distinct character. I can tell exactly who he is and what his thought process is like, and I can tell how he's likely to react in a given situation. The opening few lines of this book were also a very effective hook. I also appreciated that this novel, despite the magical humans trope, is not YA.

What I did NOT like about this book:

Unfortunately I also don't like Johnson as a person. He's too much of a douche-canoe and the book is not self-aware enough to excuse this. If he showed the teeniest bit more regret for his actions and stopped saying sexist/homophobic things--or even was but the book was again, self aware--I probably would have liked him more. But as a character I just can't root for him because I don't like him very much.

The meat of this story took too much work to find, and the plot took too much of a left turn at Albuquerque. The book is set up as a turf wars gang novel then very abruptly switches to being something or another about aliens, or magical beings, or whatever. By then I'd honestly kind of lost interest, because there was too much going on at once and too many characters got introduced at the same time.

Reel your plot in, give me a little bit of foreshadowing of that random plot twist, and this would be a better book. But again, I need to LIKE MC in order to keep reading. It's okay to have an annoying character. It's okay to have a character who's outright a bad person! But I need to have a compelling reason to root for (or even against) him. Johnson is the kind of jerky guy MC that compels neither and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall:

This could be wonderful if done right.

Rating:

4/10, has some potential, needs an overhaul.