I closed this book and immediately went searching for more. Even though the first book is billed as being the first in a trilogy and even though this book leaves things hanging there is no third book. Cunningham is apparently still writing so here's hoping she finishes this series.

This book picks up immediately after the first. The one thing I found odd was that in just a matter of days (though it was two years between publishing the first book and this one) Gwen was all of a sudden comfortable with these new developments in her life and not obviously mourning her friend any longer. It was as if she'd accepted herself being an "Elder" (elf) overnight and the readers weren't privy to that acceptance.

The plotline in this book was tangled, not badly so, but just enough so that while Gwen was picking up pieces of one case we the reader could see how they related to another. I was left wondering about the changeling process, and the implications that elf children were switched with human children with a plan in place to switch them back when they are teenagers. As Gwen says, that would take a lot of planning, and I wasn't sure if Gwen was wrong about it, if it applied to only one person, or if we were to take it as being the way things are done by the elves. I was (and still am) hoping a third book will clear that up.

I'm also waiting for the elves' plans to be made clearer. Right now it seems as if Ian Forest could be on Gwen's side but maybe only when her side runs along side his. He's self-serving, that's obvious, but nowhere near as bad as Edmondson was. ( )

This book is primarily focused on Gwen, a former police officer now working as a private detective. She suspects corruption in the police department, and that her former mentor was murdered while everyone is writing it off as accidental death. She's also a changeling: an elf raised among humans, and only recently discovering her heritage. The main thrust of the story is her search for a missing woman, which turns up more mysteries than it solves; but interwoven with it are many other strands and a number of new characters.

The book is second in a series and there are possibly slightly too many threads going on: I'm writing this a week or two after finishing it and can't remember much of what happened. Gwen is a likeable character, tough, determined and practical. I think this is an enjoyable if not outstanding contribution to the urban fantasy genre.

http://rmc28.dreamwidth.org/418025.html ( )

This story moves from a single story line to a couple or three parallel ones and from there it kind of turns into a river delta with multiple tributaries of story winding this way and that are related, but meandering into areas where we can't quite see around the next bend. Certainly Cunningham wants to keep us around and needs loads of characters who are not yet fully developed to continue pulling off this series...I suspect that we will NOT be seeing the ocean where all these individual tributaries pour for some time yet.

We start out with Gwen, continued story from the fist book in this series (Shadows in the Darkness) where a bust has gone bad, cops were killed, her mentor died under suspicious circumstances (deemed an accident, but Gwen believes it was murder). We are reintroduced to a lot of characters from the first book, each of whom is multi-layered and comes from a seemingly remarkable background and each of whom (with very few exceptions) seems to have an ulterior motive or secret agenda going on at cross grains to the current story (this is where I assume the author is building up credibility for various story lines for additional books down the line).

We have Gwen who is a remarkable woman...but not really a woman, a changeling, an elf, something she's only just found out about herself and is struggling to come to terms with throughout this book. We get her long time lesbian, lawyer friend, complete with jealous lover and a psycho controlling Ex, whose new wife turns up missing. We also have the African-American male "partner" who happens to come from a long line of "gifted" individuals and a plethora of male characters who are all vying for her attention in one way or another and claiming to want to help her...in the end, who's really on her side? That's what makes this series quite the page turner...you just have to know what the next twist in the plot is going to be!

The one quibble I have is that no one really has any trouble with her "abilities," every character seems to have a bend over backwards acceptance of what she can do without much curiosity or desire for explanation...to me this is the opposite of what happens in say Hooper's books where the incredulousness goes on and on and on until you think you're going to have to throw the book at the wall...this is the other extreme. Everyone is shocked, but no one really says anything or is suspicious of what she can do. Overall it's a small quibble, and I can live with it.

In Gwen we get a feisty, touch, kick-a** heroine, bent on finding out the truth - and that's quite a feat considering she was disgraced as a cop in the previous novel and now makes her living as a P.I. We find out where she is willing to compromise her principles and where she isn't and ultimately, for every question that is answered about the cases she's working on, more and more is alluded to about her own parents death and the more questions we are left with as a result. So, really we learn a lot in this book...but at the same time, we learn so very little. The author is certainly mysterious about the "Qualities" of both Gwen and those like her, about the lives of the "Elder Race," frankly, there are so many facets to this story that it's hard to keep track of them all, but it does make imagining where Cunningham will take this story as she weaves each new world for us to dive into quite fun! This one is fast paced and leaves many possibilities for the future...I, for one, am looking forward to the next one in this series! ( )