Ah, things are starting to wrap up. Happily Ever at-least-for-now's are in sight and I for one am going to miss this series after the next and last book.
Merit, Ethan and the rest of the good guys are all gearing up to fight the newest big bad that threatens Chicago (Chicago has been beleaguered by Big Bads - and all in 1 year!!), but they're also busy fighting amongst themselves as we see the inevitable result of putting too many alpha males in close proximity.
I'm being a bit flippant, but really, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, in spite of finding a couple of plot points predictable (the sorcerer, the importance of the symbols' locations) and the use of a deus ex machina towards the end. I've been in this series from the beginning because of the characters and dialogue; it straddles the genre extremes of darkness and vapid frivolity, falling somewhere firmly in the middle, making for a slightly thrilling, yet fun read.
This makes the weaker plotting a non-issue for me because really, it's all about Ethan, Merit, Mallory (more Mallory in this one - yay!) and Catcher and I got just what I was looking for.
I'm looking forward to book 13 to see how it all ends.