Nocturnal Book Reviews

4.5/5
This was such a delightful mess of a book with everything through in for a good measure - gangsters, vampires, social activists, demon hunters, jazz and The Prohibition, of course. Can't have roaring 20s without it!

Oh, I forgot djinn! The mysterious stranger with a dark sex appeal, the client whose dragging Zephyr in his messy dealings with gangsters started all her troubles. Yep, meet Amir.

Zephyr is a no-nonsense skinny activist, a do-gooder who fights for social equality between humans and paranormals and teaches latter in the night school. She is also an ex-demon hunter who saw that her family business was indiscriminately killing all paranormals no matter if they were criminals or not and stepped away from it. She is also a vegetarian just for the hell of it. Because you know, the rest is not enough.

So, Amir hires her to find this gangster who he suspects is a vampire. To do so, Zephyr needs to infiltrate a gang of teenage vamps who terrorise the whole neighbourhood by their unhinged cruel ways. She offers to teach their leader to read.

At the same time there is another mystery waiting to be solved - Zephyr found a brutally turned into a vampire little boy on one of the streets, and she needs to find his mother in between her detective work, protests and her newfound singing career...

The situation gets worse when her dad and a bunch of demon hunters arrive into town and his and his daughter's mark coincide...

Not only this book is full of fun, plenty of action and great characters, the atmosphere is fantastic! New York and its dirty dangerous streets, its horrible conditions for immigrant workers, and poverty are beautifully described, and I loved it!

This mix of urban fantasy and historical fiction has a great kick to it, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to find a kick ass character in a historical setting.

Wicked City, the next book in series is only available as hardback in UK at the moment. I can't afford it, but as soon as it's printed as paperback I'll buy it!