Stephen Blackmoore

"Cult Classic" deals with the aftermath of the previous novel - Eric is chasing the Oracle, time is having its own ideas and certain pasts bleed into the present causing all kinds of mayhem. The police (especially the cleanup crew which hides magic) has their hands full - it is not that easy to explain an early 20th century car showing up in the middle of a modern car... And just when you think that nothing can surprise anyone anymore, one of the doomsday cults of the early 20th century ends up being a lot more than anyone thought it was and now, 100 years later), it is about to finally gets its ending. The result is the expected mix of action, a bit of love (because why not?) and the very real possibility that this time it won't be just LA that will burn (and if anything, we know that unlike other series, this one may go there).

If this is the first book from this series you had seen, please put it down and go read the previous ones first. It does not work on its own - it is not supposed to. If you had been reading the series so far - don't plan on doing much else before you finish it.

The story seems wrapped up and with the re-introduction of a certain character (no spoilers!), if we see another book, it may be different. I cannot wait to see what happens next but even if this is the last in the series, it was all worth it.… (mais)

"Hate Machine" opens more or less where the previous one closed - with Eric being forced to go to Las Vegas because something he did 30 years ago is about to finally come back and bite him. It does not help that someone is holding Garbiela's soul as hostage (Eric may still be pissed off because of the whole getting him back from the dead thing but he still cares about her... a lot). As it turns out, someone is trying to play with time - not just with the future but with the past as well and that can lead to a lot of... interesting moments. Not that Eric cares much about the world at this point (his moral compass is anything but straight forward) but he really does not like having his chain yanked by something he made.

Moving the novel from LA to Vegas allows the novel to explore chance and time magic (which we had not seen much of) and to tie some old threads from earlier novels back in. By the end of it Eric is back to LA although the world may be slightly different from what one remembers - as usual, the consequences of some choices are not what one expects...… (mais)

Everyone's favorite necromancer is back in LA for good and after the previous novel is finally and completely separated from Mictlantecuhtli (well, mostly anyway). He is not very happy with Gabriela because of that last part (or the part where she pulled him back into the land of the living) but at least noone is burning half of LA this time around. Not yet anyway - with Eric you never know - after all there is still that part of the city that is under a magical cloud. Getting people to not notice all the magic is getting more and more entertaining.

Except that this is not what this novel is all about - instead Eric somehow ends up in the middle of a family feud (not his own) with everyone seemingly trying to kill him (so what is new?) and everyone else in the said family while working around a family curse which will kill them if they kill one of their relatives. Except that someone does die and the curse does not activate and it seems like all the rules are fluid again.

Magical LA is always fascinating in these books and this one is not an exception and we get quite a lot of backstory of the world as a whole. It is a very fast moving novel with a lot of fights, death and things that should be dead showing up out of nowhere and it fits in the series as a glove and then at the end, it sets the stage for the next novel.… (mais)