Title: City of Angels
Series: An Incarnate Accounts Novella
Author: Justin Schuelke
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 77 Pages
Category: Urban Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: I wasn’t sure I needed a spin-off novella starring Trish Takahashi until I read it, and I can say that while it was different not having Emery Luple at the storytelling helm, different was also a lot of fun.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: It’s not murder. It’s a monster.
A body is found in Los Angeles, the City of Angels, staged to evoke a famous murder and garner international attention. Trish arrives on the scene, ready to do what she does best: hunt the monster responsible.
But what should be a quick in-and-out mission spirals into a nightmare involving myths and legends from the local area, and the more Trish digs into the case, the more she realizes it was all orchestrated to lure her to the city.
Will she be able to escape the trap designed specifically for her?
Review: Trish Takahashi played an important role in Incarnate, book one in the Incarnate Accounts series, when she helped Emery Luple defeat the Sewer Gator incarnate in New York City. If you haven’t read the book you might be thinking I’m sorry, the what now?, but suffice to say, if she hadn’t been there it would have taken Emery a lot longer to discover he was not the Monster Hunter incarnate he believed he was. Plus, he might’ve died . . . again . . . so that would’ve sucked.
Trish is the actual Monster Hunter in this wild and magical world, and this is why she’s been lured to Los Angeles. A murder has been committed that mimics some characteristics from a famously unsolved murder in 1947, and she’s there to track down the incarnate that did it. Because I’ll never miss an opportunity to quote Oscar Wilde, Trish soon discovers that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple,” which is to say it’s always prudent to expect the unexpected when incarnates are involved. That means some characters show up to keep things interesting, and some of them simply to complicate matters.
I wasn’t sure I needed a spin-off novella starring Trish until I read it, and I can say that while it was different not having Emery at the storytelling helm, different was also a lot of fun. Getting to see Trish as both the badass Monster Hunter and the incarnate who doesn’t hesitate to make time to entertain a little girl’s whimsy made her a more interesting character than she already was.
The bargain Trish strikes with another incarnate after the case was solved wrapped things up in such a lovely way. That she entirely upset the plans laid out for her by a familiar foe was satisfying too.
You can buy City of Angels at:
[zilla_button url=”https://books2read.com/City-of-Angels” style=”black” size=”large” type=”round” target=”_blank”] Amazon.com [/zilla_button]