There's a little recap at the start ... I think I needed even more of a refresher. I powered on and enough came back to me to enjoy this next installment. It's always a bit of a shift to go from normal audiobooks to graphic audio; needing to "memorize" voices to know who is talking, the music at the end of each episode, the sound effects (slurping of vampires feeding, of people having sex). It feels a little like when I have a TV show on but I'm busy doing other things, and am not really watching, just listening ...

This answers(ish) the main question - Darcy ... IS she the new queen reincarnated, or is the human still in there somewhere? A lot more on Hope. 

While I got into this, I was fine with it being done. I assume I'll continue on when the next installment comes out, but it is hard with the wait in-between, and no print copy to have a quick skim through to remember. I almost wish I'd waited until the series was complete before starting.