As a fan of Thea Harrison’s Elder Races series, I was excited to see what this spinoff series would entail. Truthfully, when I first saw reviews popping up for this book, I thought it was the next Elder Races book. It wasn’t until I read the first review that I realized it was just a spinoff. This story follows Sophie and Nikolas in Great Britain.
Sophie was adopted as a child. She has some magical abilities, but doesn’t really understand them. She doesn’t know where they came from. When she learns about her past, she also learns that she has the ability to inherit an estate in England, but only if she’s able to get into it. Seeing as she was currently not working (she’s a PI who is recovering from a gunshot), she decided to see what would happen.
A lot of strange things happen before she even makes it to the estate. Her car stops working before she makes it to town. She stumbles upon a mangy dog-like creature that she decides to take in.
Then she meets Nik and she is able to learn more about herself, since he knows what she is. They also have an interesting relationship at the beginning. They aren’t what you call friends, but there is an attraction between the two. There’s also some really great banter between these two. It only gets better as they get closer to each other.
I enjoyed this story. It’s not as good as the Elder Races, mainly because I miss so many of those characters. The story has several minor characters, but mostly it is Sophie, Nik, Gawain, Robin (the Puck), the villain, Morgan le Fae. Yes, there are some of the people in the town. There are also the other Daoine Sidhe that are trapped with Nik and Gawain, but their parts are very minor.
As per my usual, my favorite character in this story is not one of the main characters, but Robin, the Puck. He’s the dog-like creature that she finds walking down the road. He’s a shapeshifter (not like shifters you think of in most shifter books, but more can change into many different creatures). When she finds him, he has little of his power. He’s also very traumatized and doesn’t want to speak, out loud or telepathically. I loved watching him get stronger and braver throughout the book.
Overall, it’s a pretty good story. I wish there were more characters included in the story. If you looked at this book as the start of an entirely new series, I would say that it was a pretty good start. With this being a spinoff, I feel like there is a lot of world building that still needed. There isn’t a single character in this from the original series. The Wyr are mentioned, but only in passing. I will say that I enjoyed the story and plan to continue listening. I’m really hoping that I get more about Robin’s adventures.
She stuck the screen of her phone into his face. “Here. This is me.”
He watched the clip of an octopus running away along the ocean floor. The words, ‘NOPE. NOPE. NOPE’ appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“What the hell am I looking at?” he barked.
“It’s a nope GIF. You’ve never seen a nope GIF? There are hundreds on the Internet.” She smiled. “We literally never have to have this conversation again. You’ll bring it up again, and I’ll just send you a GIF. Subject closed.”
Narration
I’m a huge fan of Sophie Eastlakes. I think she did a great job with the narration of this book. I’m really glad that she was able to do this spinoff series. I think it helps with the cohesion with The Elder Races series. She did a great job with the English accents that she had to tackle for this story, though there weren’t as many as you would expect for a story set in Great Britain.