First read: Angel is incredibly competent and because of that the stories are actually shorter than the usual urban fantasy. He puts the pieces of the conflict together much faster than your traditional main character, especially the ones who get handed the Idiot Ball a few too many times. He's powerful, intelligent and often does not need to ask people for help (as the summary implies) because it is unnecessary. His love interest is great - I just wish we had more backstory to their previous two years of interactions that build up to the pièce de résistance of romantic bonding.

Second read: just as good - I just wish the whole series focused on Angel instead of Isaac. 

Copaganda with too many of the off-putting aspects of fanfiction without enough of the good aspects to keep me going. Starting the book with one of the main characters as an alcoholic cop who killed a man "in the line of duty" did not endear me.

I struggled with this one - and I wish I could say it was because one of the characters was a spider creature and I was somehow horrified. Unfortunately, it was mostly because their difficulty communicating (which makes sense, given the human & alien spider man pairing) was so boring to me that I skimmed until it got more ... interesting.