Author: Lia Cooper
Publisher: The Spec Press
Pages/Word Count: 291 Pages
At a Glance: No romance but loads of murderous and metaphysical fun in this Urban Fantasy series.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Walking away from your soulmate is not for the faint of heart…
Following the Matilde Walker murder, Detective Ethan Ellison is back working misdemeanors and answering what he believes are prank calls. Still reeling from Christophe’s betrayal, his magic and mind begin to unravel around him, and he’s only just beginning to realize how much sleeping with Clanahan may have changed his life.
Meanwhile, Detective Pat Clanahan would give anything to get the memory of Ethan out of his head. If he can’t have the mage, and every sign suggests that he can’t, he sure has hell wishes everything at the station didn’t remind him of the other man. Now he’s up to his elbows in mutilated bodies and desecrated graves with no suspect in sight.
Murder, UST, and pining lurk right around the corner for both men as Seattle hurtles to the hottest summer on record and their fates once again meet in THE CONVERGENCE THEORY, Book Two in the Blood & Bone Trilogy.
Review: If you love your main characters frustrating to the extreme, and sexually frustrated to boot, do I have the book for you. Okay, that’s not fair. Patrick Callahan and Ethan Ellison aren’t always frustrating…just mostly…and they’re not always sexually frustrated…just mostly (mostly poor Pat)…and I liked the angst and friction and everything else that happened between them in this second installment of the Blood & Bone series.
Cooper’s The Duality Paradigm introduced readers to this world and its inhabitants—Patrick is a werewolf, Ethan a mage, and Seattle is the setting for all the mythical, magical, and murderous mayhem that wends its way through these books. The city is teeming with the weird and wonderful—the supernaturals aren’t hiding from humans here. This is a world that’s integrated its paranormal population, and Pat and Ethan are two who’ve sworn to pursue justice on the Seattle police force.
Since the blurb mentions it, I’m not giving away any secrets here: Pat and Ethan soul bonded while investigating the murder of a young woman in book one, and here’s where the author bends the rules of some of the tropes we’re more familiar with in shifter lore—these guys sort of can’t stand each other. Just because there was some magic mojo unleashed when they had sex doesn’t mean that mate bond was an insta-love, hearts and flowers, goo-goo mush face, you-are-my-destiny mating. In fact, Ethan’s still the manwhore he’s always been, while Patrick’s werewolf knows its mate but poor Pat can’t even think about sex with anyone else—he’s mated for life with a guy he can barely be in the same room with without there being something to fight about. The angst that exists between these two guys is crazy-making, no doubt, but it’s also realistic because they have such different ideals and were raised in such vastly different environments. I might even hazard to say that it’s Ethan who could use a good dose of Patrick rather than the other way around. Ethan is a man out of his element in many ways, getting stuck investigating murders when he’s not even a homicide detective. He also doesn’t do interpersonal relationships so well, with good reason—once bitten, twice shy isn’t just a pithy idiom where his past is concerned.
The author’s prose brings this fun Urban Fantasy to life, and I love the mysteries these men investigate because as the body count continues to rise, all the clues do is unveil a deeper horror and more to unravel. There’s something out there doing vile things to humans—both living and formerly living—in The Convergence Theory, and though Ethan and Patrick don’t spend much time together for a good part of the outset of this novel, something like the first half of the book, it’s death and the “something evil out there” that’s the catalyst for their reunion. True to form, though, just because they’re stuck together again trying to find a killer, that doesn’t mean they have to like it. I liked it, though. The murders were just my kind of gruesome and grizzly, and the preternatural killer just my kind of creeptastic.
There are some great secondary characters in this novel, from cryptic sisters to an aging man who’s sensing things he can’t name to Ali, the woman who warms Ethan’s bed for a while (yes, Ethan is bi, which I don’t recall picking up on in book one, but whatever. There’s girly bits and whoopdee-doo). I liked her chemistry with Ethan even though I wasn’t sure if she was as charming as she appeared to be—their interactions were easy going and genuine due in large part to the author’s use of dialogue. The banter and conversation between the characters helps to tell the story and makes the interactions feel realistic.
I don’t want to end this on a down note, but it does bear mentioning that this book didn’t format with scene breaks, so be aware, if you should decide to hop into this, that without those breaks you make your way from Ethan’s head into Patrick’s and back again without warning. It was a bit jarring at first, but once clued into the issue, it was fairly evident after a while to sense when a shift was coming and prepare for it. The book may not be perfect, but it’s entertaining.
That said, I’m looking forward to jumping into book three and finding out how Lia Cooper plans to bring this trilogy to a close. I would recommend this series with the caveat that you don’t go into it expecting any sort of hearts and flowers romantic stuff mixed in with the murdery bits.
You can buy The Convergence Theory here:
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