Title: Gods and Ends

Author: Devon Monk

Series: Ordinary Magic #3

Rating: 1.5/5 stars

The Overview: Keep your gods close and your monsters closer… Police Chief Delaney Reed thinks she knows all of Ordinary, Oregon’s secrets. Gods on vacation, lovelorn ghosts, friendly neighborhood monsters? Check. But some secrets run deeper than even she knows. To take down an ancient vampire hell-bent on revenge, she will have to make the hardest decision of her life: give up the book of dark magic that can destroy them all, or surrender her mortal soul. As she weighs her options, Delaney discovers she can no longer tell the difference between allies keeping secrets and enemies telling the truth. Questioning loyalties and running out of time, Delaney must choose sides before a kidnapping turns into murder, before rival crochet and knit gangs start a war, and before the full moon rises to signal the beginning of Ordinary’s end. -Goodreads

The Review:

Huh.

What happened to that thoughtful, calculating main character who’s been around since the introductory novella? I mean, she’s always kind of done things her own way (to a fault), but she’s never been what I would call reckless. It’s part of why I liked her so much – enough flaws to feel realistic, but adept enough to be fun to read about. I really don’t care how much attention the author drew to her bad decision making in this book through other characters, I’m afraid it didn’t compensate for how unrealistic the whole thing came across based on the character profile established up to that point.

And don’t even get me started on the demon.

Ugh. His introduction felt clunky. And a very compelling through-line of the series involving Delany’s father (which could’ve gone somewhere meaningful) was reduced down to a single chapter of wtf is happening to this series? I thought the “mysteriously deceased father” plot point was strong enough to warrant an entire investigation novel within itself and I would’ve been much more satisfied had a lead-up like that culminated to ::enter the demon, stage left::, but as it stands, it was a clear throwaway. 

I’m feeling uncharacteristically ranty, if you can’t tell, but I can say with certainty that none of the elements that made me rate the first two books so highly were represented in this book. I think the conflict with the vampires should’ve been resolved completely in the last installment. There are just too many other potential plot ideas already in place for that expansion to be necessary. At this point the series is morphing into something completely different than its beginning premises. It’s a series about vacationing gods in a quirky town… why is the main focus now about only werewolves, vampires, and demons? There are just too many ideas compacted into one story, almost as if two different series are being forced together. And as of this book she has essentially removed everything that made the plot stand out from the crowd for me.

And let’s say for a minute I didn’t mind the change in direction – I still had a problem with the execution. There were so many premonitions, warnings, and prophecy-like conveyances that it basically outlined the entire book. It left nothing to be discovered and made me feel like I was wasting energy reading when I already knew how things were going to wrap up. Lets just say, by the end of the book I was grateful most of the foreshadowed conflicts had been resolved because it meant a cleaner slate for the next installment.

Series status: I’ll be reading the novella compilation and the next book in the series because I’ve already purchased them (and I still have hope and a great couple of examples what the story could be), but this book almost knocked me off the wagon well enough that it had better slow down and let me clamber back in if I’m to read beyond that.

Recommendations: after the first two books I was professing this series as a fun little new excursion from the more serious urban fantasies out there, but now I have to pull back a bit for re-evaluation. We’ll see how the next book goes – stay tuned…

Other books you might like (based on the first two books, not the new direction taken by this one):

by Niki Hawkes