Connor Grey saved the city from Taint at the end of the last book; problem is he doesn’t know how he did it. And no one believes that. The dark shadow in his head is changing and has moved into a kind of self-defence mode. Some of his powers have come back and in ways they didn’t work before. Now, as a druid, he can sense someone’s essence to the point where he can identify their sex, he has some earth magic abilities of the troll, he has prescient dreams and he struggles to control the darkness in his head. He is gaining powers faster than he knows how to use them.The fae have their own agenda and send an under queen to question him. Ceridwen is armed with a spear of power and an ugly attitude and tries to force him to speak the truth. It does not go well. Meryl is also called to the hearing and is her usual uncooperative self.As the time approaches when the ways between the worlds traditionally open, it seems this year, they might actually do it when that hasn’t happened since Convergence more than 100 years ago. The Taint remnants coalesce on the Boston Common and make the fairy ring stronger.Meanwhile, Connor’s old partner Dylan is in town investigating magic artefact theft and his aunt is Connor’s mentor so Connor can’t avoid him. He knows he treated Dylan badly when he left New York and he doesn’t know how to apologise. The fact that he tries, shows how much the character has grown. If he sticks with Meryl she will thump some more character into him.Called in by Murdock to help out again, he finds the body of a homeless man, killed by an essence blast. The murderer is female and a druid. A second body bears the same female essence and they start to look for how the two are connected. Three separate cases start to tie together.The world building is still growing and works well. I love the jurisdictional disputes between all the fae groups. They would SO do that. And the issues between born fae and older fae that came through before convergence. A huge generational conflict of old world and new. The human police are adopting a ‘we wash our hands of this weirdness’ philosophy and are actually trying to cordon off the Weird from the rest of the city. Clouds of Taint essence cause outbreaks of aggression and when both people have magic, the police have no way of controlling them.Murdock has issues of his own and has been affected by the events of the last book; he now has a magic body shield. And no, he hasn’t told his father, the Commissioner of Police. Joe the flit is so excited by all this that he just stays drunk and hyped up on Oreos all the time. Finally, the veil between the worlds opens and the dead start to come through. And a lot of those dead have Connor’s name. Many well crafted new players and further surprising developments with established characters made for highly powered interactive scenes. Hints of the lives of these characters beyond what Connor knows is intriguing and I hope to piece together more over time. A character close to Connor in his past was a very good edition to this volume, highlighting how much Connor is changing. However, I downgrade the rating on the book because the final battle scenes are so confusing which I felt overshadowed the character moments interjected into the chaos. Overall a good edition to the series, but I think I can look forward to more from future installments in the series.
What do You think about Unfallen Dead (2009)?
I'm very sad that Mr Del Franco is not currently writing more books!
—Lorraine
