A decent book, but not anything stunning. There are jewels of prose scattered throughout it, and I loved the build up around White Knights. Plot wise however I found it slow enough that I would go weeks between readings, and only kept going because I was bound and determined to finish it before the year's end for the sake of my Goodreads Reading Challenge.

The romantic dilemma is what interested me the most - a witch who only eats raw flesh with a curse that makes the man she loves really appetizing and a knight who gains power and protection from his chastity. It didn't crop up until maybe a third, close to half way through the book, but I did love how it was resolved. Not at all what I expected.

I've never really read mystery books, I find the genre more entertaining on TV than on paper, but I really enjoyed this book. I didn't expect how a lot of the plots were wrapped up, and there were a bunch of layers of relationships between the characters and the places in London.

The best part is simply Peter Grant. He has a roll your eyes attitude at things and a flat sort of humor. Okay, this is a British book so maybe it's just British humor, but the sort of non-nonchalance he gives to killing vampires and the bureaucratic of the London police makes him solid. He knows parts of what he's doing is crazy and makes no sense , like sniffing dead bodies for traces of magic, and quite regularly makes sarcastic comments about his job like how the London police greeting is 'Oi! What do you think you're doing?'. Grant's also a secret geek, calling Nightingale Harry Potter and joking about magic coming form midi-clorians.

Despite how fantastical the case is, the way it's solved is pure non-fiction. There are disputes between police departments, lots of searching through paperwork, and wrong guesses. This is not one of those quick cases, it takes Grant and Co roughly six months to figure out who is causing people's faces to fall off and stop them.

I'll be honest, this isn't a quick read. It's a decent sized book and while the story moves it didn't grab me to the point where I'd sit and read for hours. But it was constantly in my head and thoughts of Grant's case were never far from my mind. It's a great read to use when you have a lot of actual work to do, because it serves as little vacation from grading papers and lesson planning without sucking you in too deep to not break off and get back to you job to finish by the end of the day.

*sigh* I think what I love best about this book is how well Maas handles relationships. Friendship, romantic, it's all so visceral. Witches and riddles and corrupt kings are pretty cool too.

I thought the writing was nothing to be thrilled about, but the content was marvelous. I wouldn't say it's my all time favorite book, but for sure it's one I would bring with me on a desert island. So much of it is true.