
Sometimes I take a chance with a book that looks and whose blurb sounds completely random. Of those sometimes, I have fun with very few. I had fun reading this. A few pages into it, I felt like I was reading a contemporary version of The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which I read quite recently. I kept thinking that until the sudden appearance of immortals into the narrative. ( I did not read the blurb before I started reading it, only when I had first placed it in my TBR).
The snappy writing and the constant action can be tiring but is anything but boring. Our lead protagonist is Bellamy Vale. He has made a deal with powers beyond the mortal plane. This gives him access and requires him to carry out actions to protect ordinary citizen from getting caught in problems of the other ‘worlds’. Gods from some western mythologies are present in the narrative, and prior knowledge of them might help keep plot points in order. I knew just the basics and understood most of what was happening, Vale does help by providing us with context when required. It is a relatively short book, and I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a fan of action sequences and magical creatures being the core of a narrative based in our current reality.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.