This series began with a concept that I usually love - supernatural police force - and then immediately complicated itself by starting us off in the middle of a relationship that we, as the audience, are not emotionally invested in. Pierce had to convince us of the sincerity of emotion that comes from a partnership of years falling apart due to abandonment, with the additional complications of the betrayed party cycling through part of the 5 stages of grief (but really only managing to end up in anger again and again) and falling into a drug addiction. There was also the added bonus of a surprise dead sister lurking in Grissom's recent past as well, shoehorned in without adding a goddamn thing to the narrative. Needless to say, I was not persuaded.

To me, this read more as an outline than a novel - if fleshed out (hah!) properly, I could have really enjoyed the plot of "who is this gross skinless zombie?" It would have been great to see Grissom and Ender finally stopped fucking around and put their heads together in order to figure out if Ender's bloodlust issues were relevant to their case. I just really hate miscommunication as a plot device. Ender is over two hundred years old, surely he can adult by now.

Instead, we get some very rushed bits and pieces of a crime scene (why skip the fun forensic parts?) and a strategically placed clairvoyant fae side character who just lobs answers at Grissom. These two were great investigative partners two years ago? Could have fooled me. Everything Grissom "figured out" about their Big Bad came from Clover and Ender was basically a useless lump.

The obligatory sex scene (not including the

rutting against one another IN FRONT OF THE BIG BAD because they're totally professionals who can do their jobs

) was filled with genre cliches of alpha male provocation and sexy growling and also "taut anus muscles". If I had to have that phrase inside my head, so do you.

NEW THINGS I LEARNED:
⇴ The Battle of Navarino, where Ender was killed and subsequently turned into a vampire, is the subject of some rather lovely art.


[Battle of Navarino by Ivan Aivozovsky, 1846]