by Sara Raasch
Thanks to NetGalley, MacMillan Audio and the author for the opportunity to listen and review this ALC.
i just discovered Sara Raasch a few months ago when I stumbled upon The Entanglement of Rival Wizards and just fell in love with her world building – modern day North America with humans living among supernatural creatures and magic in sort of a mundane fashion. I get that the concept is not new or unusual, we’ll see it in many parenormal/ urban fantasies and cozy monster romances, but none of the same sort of humour with pop cultural references and everyday irritations, like traffic jams, or in this case large monsters living in central park that love hot dogs.
This is a different world than her Magic and Romance series. in this case we have descendants of the gods, with super powers who fight against monsters that threaten human lives. There is a real “superhero” feel here. There are “Hero Councils” that are made up of various demi gods, descendants from dozens of different God pantheons dedicated to fighting and protecting the humans that are inconvenienced by monsters of myth and legend. Each region has its own hero council organization, consisting not only super powered individuals but also staff members and support teams of smart but ordinary humans. It’s really like a Justice League from the comics and I don’t think that is by coincidence. There is an international HC body that loosely governs all the regional councils, and it was all established by some pretty bad behaviour of the actual gods.
Enter Pollux Korounos, a descendant of Zeus who wants nothing to do with the New York Branch. In fact, he would like to tear down the entire organization as he has proof of their corrupt and unfair practices. Never mind that his older brother runs the show, his bigger, stronger, more god like powerful awful specimen of a brother, Castor, beloved of all and the epitome of heroic. Backed by his best friend, Erik Thorsson, yes, descendent of Thor, large, blond Viking do -gooder that Lux has had a serious crush on since he was 14 yrs old.
Lux doesn’t have super powers, unless you consider being a computer genius, with a masters from MIT, creating a sassy virtual assistant named Molly who seems to have taken a special interest in match making and reality TV shows and having a fantastic wardrobe with a wicked sense for nail polish colours.
But things being as they are in a romance novel, Lux finds himself called up to the council when his brother mysteriously disappears, being forced to work closely with Erik and make friends with the rest of the council, the same council that he swore to bring to it’s knees. And now, being invited into the circle, he finally has access to all the data that he has been dreaming of, but instead of finding more reasons to hate the council, he only finds things there to not be what he expected. And Erik is not what he expected.
The story that unfolds is typical Romantasy tropes – he finds family and companionship within the organization, he is forced to confront some hard truths about himself, he learns that being hero isn’t about being strong and good looking (although Erik has all that and he’s not complaining). We meet side characters that I am pretty sure will show up in later novels as main couples. The hook up scenes are set up convincingly and occur at the right time and in the right frequency that I felt I got enough build up to make the emotions believable, but early enough that we can get more than one scene. And, this being a romance, a HEA ending that makes your heart smile.
The humour that is laced throughout the book is at times laugh out loud funny. Or stupid grin funny at the least. There is one scene in particular that references fan fic and shipping that I especially loved and I don’t even care for fanfic. But it’s so true. I like that self referential vibe from the author.
While it was missing that one extra factor that makes me cry at these novels ( I swear, it’s a thing that if I get tears, it’s an automatic .25 of a start!) this is still a fun and satisfying book. The production by Macmillan is well done as per usual. I believe the narrator is the same for other Sara Raasch books and has a very good voice for Lux, although the swedish accent that the character of Erik calls for gets lost at times. Its fair to say that his accent only comes out in times of great emotion, and I would not have noticed except the text says that Thorsson’s voice drops into a thick accent when it’s not there. Also, the ending was a bit overly drawn out, once the major event was resolved there seemed to be several chapters of Lux’s inner monologue without anything actually happening. I enjoyed the character so I wasn’t overly concerned but I would have loved to see something from the near future, some hint of the next book or the next couple. There were a few details dropped throughout the book that hints at something more and I can’t wait to find out what that might be.
I gave this book a solid 4 stars on Storygraph and other applications.
