Includes the titles:
- Mocker of Ravens
- Dancer of Death
- Drinker of Blood
- Breaker of Chains
- Shaker of Earth
I read this collection even faster than I did the first one. It’s too bad I can’t give it an even higher rating than 5 stars.
John, Caleb, and Gray are back to doing what they do best — dispatch demons with extreme prejudice. Their world looks very different after the events in the first SPECTR series, and in some ways (thanks to government bureaucracy), completely the same. But Hawk introduces us to newer, badder demons in this collection, finally giving Gray a bit of a fight.
The references to a Russian drakul in the previous series made it pretty obvious that they would have to show up here. I was not disappointed on any front, especially since Hawk is fantastic at taking expectations and completely subverting them. Nothing happened between Caleb/Gray and Yuri/Dru the way I anticipated, and I couldn’t be happier. I again stayed up way too late reading to finish, and I regret nothing.
Once again, Hawk’s effortless inclusion of diversity made me a happy reader. I especially adored new secondary character Zahira, and I hope to see more of her in the future despite the new normal that exists at the end of this series. My use of “demons” in my reviews is a misnomer based on Hawk’s worldbuilding, where these creatures are merely beings from a different plane of existence without a religious framework. So it’s fascinating that the exorcist characters do seem to use religion in the way they interact with the creatures. This applies to Zahira in Hawk’s portrayal of modern Islam, but I’m especially eager to learn in a future story why John worships(?) an almost forgotten Egyptian deity in apparent contrast.
Honestly, I could go on a whole tangent picking apart all the worldbuilding that Hawk does so well in this series. Instead, you should go experience it for yourself.
Rating: 5 (out of 5) stars. Cross-posted to Amazon and Goodreads.
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