It really just gets better and better imo. We get answers about Blue, and they are good answers. Cowards are revealed, as is regal bravery. It’s all so very good. More questions arise as some are answered and the tension increases massively as we hurtle toward the possible death of our boy. I feel like the humour and characterization get better with each instalment as well. People always reveal themselves in surprising ways.

2022 re read: the plotting is really satisfying from book to book, but even more so when you know what happens already. This book grows in a big way and does a lot to make Adam and Ronan more interesting, and Blue more distinct, with a backbone. It’s more funny than the first one too. But, I have to say, Will Patton is a pretty mixed narrator. He’s not good at delivering some of the lines, but is good generally at making voices distinct. He’s far from bad but also doesn’t seem like a trained voice actor, which is weird, since he’s an actor. His delivery is really odd sometimes.

These books are blowing me away. Once again, 0 complaints. The plotting is. So. Good. And once again, an amazing ending. I couldn’t imagine waiting a year or whatever for the next book. Glad they’re all out so I can immediately start the next.

2022 reread: This was a re read for me. Knowing how everything comes together later, it’s really fun seeing what was telegraphed even this early on. Love the characters, love the descriptions, the atmosphere. Some dialogue feels slightly stilted. In that way it does feel almost like a really tight pilot. Most of the chemistry and dialogue is there, but we know it gets much better.

Absolutely loved it. Good characters, fantastic descriptions and plotting. I can’t think of a thing that bothered me in it. Going to start with the second one right away after that bomb shell ending!

“I’m going to tell you everything.”
“I want to know.”
“It’s not a happy story.”
“I think I’m ready,” he said.
“I think you think that. But it’s sadder than you think.”

2020 reread: Previously, I didn’t like this as much because the first book does feel more literary and subversive, and just a lot more clever at a macro level, craft wise. This book is an excellent pairing with the first though, as the main themes are extended and annunciated brilliantly, and Julia is, intentionally, a better character with a much more meaningful story—even though I, personally, remember myself at Quinton’s age and that makes his story extremely impactful to me. I just really like the limitations of the soft magic system in these books. It comes from adversity and pain and trauma, with the possibility of transformation at great cost. It’s something that innately makes sense to me because that’s how the world works. Not everyone with trauma can move forward and unfortunately the trauma cycle creates predators as depicted in this book—and that can mean the end of that person as they were before, but it isn’t over for them, either. It’s, again, verisimilitude and the author encoding, seemingly, their own truths in the story that’s being told. Love it or hate it, it makes it more interesting, to me, than 99% of the world out there.

I always like how the fiction in this most resembles the real world. Things are always more impactful when writers put themselves out there on paper. It’s a little messy sometimes, but I prefer it.

Once again, since everything is either from Quinton or Julia’s perspectives, both, at times, can be unlikeable. There’s no filter at all. Even the surface bullshit thoughts nobody voices are there in this method and can be off putting.

But I find it refreshing. The world isn’t fair by a long shot. Traditional notions around the hero are examined. It has something to say in a unique voice, in a take-it-or-leave-it way.

It’s a lot less literary/contemporary than the first book and has a capital p plot, grounding the narrative, which is both good and bad for expectations. There’s a lot more self awareness and humour that doesn’t do much for me. But the ending really hits for me—even on this reread when I knew what was going to happen. It’s a polarizing book yet again; for different reasons than the first, though.

It’s one of my favourite fantasy series because it’s way of connecting with the reader is unlike anything I’ve read. I care about the characters in ways I rarely do in others, and as I say, the guy puts himself out there in the work. For me, it’s fantastic.

Be warned though. Much more Heavy subject matter in this one. Self harm, sexual assault. The tone shifts. It’s not always dark, but it’s never what I’d call a casual, super fun casual fantasy read (as I wouldn’t call the first either).

2022 reread: I actually liked this more throughout. It’s Ronin all the way down yaaaallll

She’s good at the endings. Gotta give her that.

This is, I think, a good follow up to what ended up being one of my favourites. And I really liked the Raven Cycle books. I read them at exactly the right time in my life, both mood and genre wise. This book had to be a down beat after the previous, which somehow made me like Declan immensely despite thinking he was a douche before.

Sooo much stuff happened and was introduced last book, it was always going to be like this. It’s a definite middle book. And, some of it feels a bit unearned, particularly with Bryde, but also in general, the novel feels a bit padded to me. What I mean by Bryde, is that typically each book rotates with a central character having their spotlight. But there’s not much to see of Bryde, and the big shit about everyone else, we pretty much already got.

However. There are some good moments, you’d expect no less from these books. More than enough chapters with endings that are perfect and poignant. There’s more world building revealed too. It’s really just that only part of the ending hit home and it felt like we meandered to get there. It was never a chore, but neither was it the 1-2 day read the other ones were.

Granted, I’ve literally read like 600 books since the last book dropped as well, so I engage with books pretty differently now too. A bit more analysis on what did and did not work. I did notice, for instance, that with the YA prose I was pulled out of the text fairly often. I know these prose are very much in right now, but I really like vivid description and it does not require more words. More complex sentence structure and stronger verbs and you’re there… now I’m a bit more cultured and spoiled and want/need these things.

But, let’s not forget: it was very good.

Frank was quite the cool operator in the last book, running the undercover project, psychologically manipulating pretty much everyone. I didn’t see it coming, somehow, that he’d be the main character, I guess because he literally isn’t a part of the murder squad. But, as usual, I needn’t have worried about this odd framing, because French is my Jam.

Diving into Frank’s past, we see him young and in love, seeking to leave his family and town behind forever with his secret girlfriend. Only, she never shows up and there’s a letter suggesting she left without him. Fast forward to “present day”. Frank uncovers some suggestion that she never left at all, and when the body is found, Frank inserts himself into a murder squad investigation, which ends up really, really effectively showing what and how Frank tics.

French reminds me of Donna Tartt in some ways, actually. Main characters always have a secret, beating inside of them that drives them in ways they’re not aware of. And the conflict is a knife to that heart every time, all while they’re trying to function. They either seek help or bleed out (emotionally, psychgolically, etc. not physically). It’s always really affecting and a lot of material to interrogate. Parallel that with the attempted solving of a crime, and you get really character driven, really believable situations that develop organically. In less deft hands the story of an undercover cop coming from a poor Irish household with an abusive father might have felt like a rehash. French always manages to take commercial ideas and put a spin and lens to them that make them feel fresh and interesting. She is Rapidly becoming a favourite author, who straddles literary and genre fiction intersections.

This is probably one of the most affecting intersecting with mental health in a while. It nicely counterpoints the assumptions garnered by Scorcher in the previous book too, just as the one before it did with Frank. French is great at humanizing characters and putting them into situations where their locker room parallels the investigation, which is what unwinds them in the particular mystery-homicide.

Scorcher has a mentally ill sister spiralling into a depressive state at the same time as catching a murder located at a small suburb where he and the family used to vacation. It also happens to be where his mentally ill mother took her own life. Since then Scorcher meticulously organizes everything in his life, which has served him fairly well on the squad-though not as always, as we learned in the previous book. His proclivity to a sort of Occam’s Razor approach makes him bull headed when the facts line up. As a counterpoint to that, he’s only now worked his way back to duty due to the embarrassment of the last book. And he’s got a rookie to train up, fresh and new.

And, indeed they do see things differently on this one. A particular gruesome quadruple homicide with conflicting evidence. And as he pulls at the seams of the case, that wool cap over his eyes, blinding him to certain things in his own past also begins to unwind.

This took a bit longer to get rolling for me, but still would have been a five star read, especially because of the chapter of a particular confession/interrogation, which was really well done. But it’s the first one where there’s an additional element that just feels contrived. I buy how it went down in the end, but not really how this contrivance is inserted - it feels too much like heavy-handed red-herring territory. One thing I always appreciated about French is even though you usually can see who the killer is, the book is always about something greater and the investigator has personal blinders on that take them a while to figure it out, so it never feels annoying that the case itself is easy to solve for the reader. French us about the character and theme, and usually subverting an aspect of the genre. This was the first time a genre trope made it and it did take away from it, for me. There were probably any number of ways to have that introduced and make it work too, or else it wouldn’t have felt so incongruous.

However, as mentioned, the hitting of stratification of class, poverty, disparity and mental health, and social stigma feel quite well done. I’m close to putting it at a 4.5 and rounding up, if only because the themes are hit so well and Scorcher’s revelation was gutting and excellent, probably more intricate than the others in some ways. Time will tell how I end up feeling, I guess.

Another great instalment. This time with a duel narrative, past and present, at a boarding school where a young lad is murdered—unsolved, until new evidence comes in and there’s a second chance to uncover the sordid details. New detectives, another female partner, Conway, and a fresh fry looking to climb, or hop, to the murder squad ladder.

The prose work is always great, the plot nice and twisty. I can’t say I’m a fan of the dialogue work, purely because listening to tween colloquialisms generously peppered in is not at all enjoyable, for me. French manages to humanize the two groups of girls who makeup the primary suspects at an all-girls school, some of whom allegedly covertly mix with all-boys place—which presumably led to the murder. But not all that much was known because, as usual, class stratification rears its ugly mug in the form of the detectives being allowed only so much leeway to question both minors, and children of rich, influential folks.

Things move along fairly nicely with the duel timelines though, even though the plot is probably less juicy, or feels that way simply because it’s minors at a school after-the-fact. The in-group out-group is wildly intricate and predominate, and it’s probably the first one in the series where quite a few people felt like viable suspects, actually. In all the prior ones it’s pretty clear from the jump who the killer is, as these are far more about why it happened than simply means motive and opportunity. But, it’s also the first I didn’t care that much about the setup because teenagers and setting don’t appeal to my tastes off the jump. The fact that it kept me going all the way through, shows how much I enjoy French.

I had read this as a teenager and enjoyed it very much then as well. This go around, I probably enjoyed it more, understanding more of it. The voice is just perfectly crafted in my opinion, and the idea of vampires losing themselves through ages and eras passing, and what else there was to go into for the existentialism, I really still feel as fresh. I read plenty of fantasy and most vampire stories still aren’t nearly as compelling. And as a vehicle for queer - other experience, it was doing a lot for me.

My only gripe is that as beautiful as everything becomes because of the strong narrative, I really did want more theme and philosophy going on, in addition to the worldbuilding and plot. Though, the ending was pretty fantastic. I’ve also heard that future books in the series are better, which makes sense to me now. I certainly plan on continuing with it.

Also, I had the voice of Frank Muller in my ear for this, and was perfect. I highly recommend that audio experience. I had tried the sample of Simon Vance and was not at all convinced. Go for Muller or not at all, as far as I can tell.