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kathydavie's review
5.0
Third in the Twenty Palaces urban fantasy series revolving around Ray Lilly, a man with a ghost knife who is both attracted and repelled by the organization for which he works.
My Take
Phfft...this is a bunch of "friends" Ray is much better off without! Friends who betray and rob each other at the drop of a hat.
How sick is this? Wally claims he's doing these things to his old circle because Ray helped him in high school???
Why is it people never seem to grasp when to shut up and be still in a dangerous situation?
Ray's had questions about the Society and about Annalise before, but Csilla's actions are just beyond, way beyond, acceptable. Nor is Talbott's attitude a help. The pressure Annalise uses on the boat captain…
Connolly will keep you on your toes and flipping pages to learn the why of it all. Will Ray survive it, save the world? And another small step for Ray to move forward in his own evolution...eee-yewww.
So much greed. The betrayals. That panting desire for the easy way. Taking from someone else to feed your own wants.
The Story
A touch from the past when Caramella appears in Ray's bathroom with a message from Wally. His old friends are dying because they knew him.
Wally found his old crew and needed a few favors. How better to pay Ray back for everything—high school and that fiasco back in Seattle. The crew? Well, they're all greedy enough to jump on, too greedy to question it. And Arne believes Ray owes him one.
One more job. But it never stops there. Betrayals and abandonment. Future promises that aren't what was thought. Predators coming through bathtubs, the back of the couch, the floor.
The Characters
Ray Lilly finds odd and menial jobs trying to keep his head above water. He's an ex-con specializing in car theft and he fell into a situation with Twenty Palaces. Now he's one of them. More accurately, he's Annalise's wooden man. A pawn whose purpose is to take the heat. Besides some spell tattoos on his body from Annalise, his only other weapon is his ghost knife.
Annalise Powlis and Csilla Foldes are peers in the Society and while both are incredibly powerful, Csilla is very old and getting ga-ga. Talbot is new and Csilla's wooden man. His future will depend on Ray's.
Ray's old gang includes:
Caramella Harris is with Luther, a loyal dumb idiot who was the first to take Wally up on his offer; Arne Sandler is their leader; Leonard is still a guard; Ty is a fitness instructor now (Dale is his boyfriend); Fidel Robles, a.k.a., Robbie, is Arne's second-in-command but has set up his own crew with some of Arne's team; Bud and Summer are married; and, Violet Johnson was Ray's old girlfriend. She's not the loyal type in spite of what Ray did for her brother Tommy. Jasmine is her little girl and Maria is Vi's mother. King has given them powers and they're heading for the big time. Too bad King didn't define what he meant by "big time".
Wally King is a psychopath whom Ray met back up with two years ago. One who put a spell on Ray's best friend, summoned predators, and caused too many to die, all while claiming Ray was his friend. Now he's filled with predators and they feed upon each other. Wally has plans for the world. Really short-term plans.
Lino Vela is an historian caring for a house full of antiquities. Magical ones. The house belongs to the owner of the Bugatti, Steven François whose ancestor, Georges François, stole one of the spell books. Wardell Shoops was a pro football player until he beat his manager so bad that he went to prison. Now he's hired muscle for François.
The Twenty Palace Society is an organization "of sorcerers committed to...hunting down magic spells and the people who used them", taking a scorched earth policy to the extreme. The Empty Spaces, the Deeps, are on other planes and filled with predators, creatures eager to enter our world and feed.
The spell books that made the primaries, secondaries, etc. seem to be a small group of types which are repeated within a "family": The Smith Book of Oceans, the Jones Book of Grooves, the Mowbray Book of Oceans, the Lilly Book of Motes, the King Book of Oceans. We'll see how much information Connolly dribbles out in the next book.
The Cover
The cover is orange (the title), browns, and black. Inside an old building with open-back wooden stairs and a wooden floor pierced by a hole and rimmed in flames leading to the Empty Spaces.
The title is too right. Ray is surrounded by his own Circle of Enemies.
My Take
Phfft...this is a bunch of "friends" Ray is much better off without! Friends who betray and rob each other at the drop of a hat.
How sick is this? Wally claims he's doing these things to his old circle because Ray helped him in high school???
Why is it people never seem to grasp when to shut up and be still in a dangerous situation?
Ray's had questions about the Society and about Annalise before, but Csilla's actions are just beyond, way beyond, acceptable. Nor is Talbott's attitude a help. The pressure Annalise uses on the boat captain…
Connolly will keep you on your toes and flipping pages to learn the why of it all. Will Ray survive it, save the world? And another small step for Ray to move forward in his own evolution...eee-yewww.
So much greed. The betrayals. That panting desire for the easy way. Taking from someone else to feed your own wants.
The Story
A touch from the past when Caramella appears in Ray's bathroom with a message from Wally. His old friends are dying because they knew him.
Wally found his old crew and needed a few favors. How better to pay Ray back for everything—high school and that fiasco back in Seattle. The crew? Well, they're all greedy enough to jump on, too greedy to question it. And Arne believes Ray owes him one.
One more job. But it never stops there. Betrayals and abandonment. Future promises that aren't what was thought. Predators coming through bathtubs, the back of the couch, the floor.
The Characters
Ray Lilly finds odd and menial jobs trying to keep his head above water. He's an ex-con specializing in car theft and he fell into a situation with Twenty Palaces. Now he's one of them. More accurately, he's Annalise's wooden man. A pawn whose purpose is to take the heat. Besides some spell tattoos on his body from Annalise, his only other weapon is his ghost knife.
Annalise Powlis and Csilla Foldes are peers in the Society and while both are incredibly powerful, Csilla is very old and getting ga-ga. Talbot is new and Csilla's wooden man. His future will depend on Ray's.
Ray's old gang includes:
Caramella Harris is with Luther, a loyal dumb idiot who was the first to take Wally up on his offer; Arne Sandler is their leader; Leonard is still a guard; Ty is a fitness instructor now (Dale is his boyfriend); Fidel Robles, a.k.a., Robbie, is Arne's second-in-command but has set up his own crew with some of Arne's team; Bud and Summer are married; and, Violet Johnson was Ray's old girlfriend. She's not the loyal type in spite of what Ray did for her brother Tommy. Jasmine is her little girl and Maria is Vi's mother. King has given them powers and they're heading for the big time. Too bad King didn't define what he meant by "big time".
Wally King is a psychopath whom Ray met back up with two years ago. One who put a spell on Ray's best friend, summoned predators, and caused too many to die, all while claiming Ray was his friend. Now he's filled with predators and they feed upon each other. Wally has plans for the world. Really short-term plans.
Lino Vela is an historian caring for a house full of antiquities. Magical ones. The house belongs to the owner of the Bugatti, Steven François whose ancestor, Georges François, stole one of the spell books. Wardell Shoops was a pro football player until he beat his manager so bad that he went to prison. Now he's hired muscle for François.
The Twenty Palace Society is an organization "of sorcerers committed to...hunting down magic spells and the people who used them", taking a scorched earth policy to the extreme. The Empty Spaces, the Deeps, are on other planes and filled with predators, creatures eager to enter our world and feed.
The spell books that made the primaries, secondaries, etc. seem to be a small group of types which are repeated within a "family": The Smith Book of Oceans, the Jones Book of Grooves, the Mowbray Book of Oceans, the Lilly Book of Motes, the King Book of Oceans. We'll see how much information Connolly dribbles out in the next book.
The Cover
The cover is orange (the title), browns, and black. Inside an old building with open-back wooden stairs and a wooden floor pierced by a hole and rimmed in flames leading to the Empty Spaces.
The title is too right. Ray is surrounded by his own Circle of Enemies.
tolstoyan_literary_odyssey's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bowilliams's review
5.0
Connolly is really hitting his stride with this series- some jaw-dropping, wtf-just-happened moments in this book, and a super satisfying ending. Can't wait for the next one!
shaekin's review
4.0
I still don't know how this series got on my to read list, but I really like it. It's a little darker than I normally like, but written such that it's not so horrific I have to quit. The plots are interesting, the trials seem actually difficult, and the characters actually seem to be in danger. Overall, I would recommend, I hope the series gets finished, and I would love to have audio books released for books 2 and 3 for my friends who don't read.
kblincoln's review
5.0
I'm not a fan of gritty/noir investigations, but boy does author Harry Connolly know how to draw you in and leave you no room for attention wandering.
I really enjoyed the first two books, but only at the 4 star level. I think this the first time in my reading career I've ever given a 5 start review to the third book in a series when the other two were 4 stars.
If you like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden or Kevin Hearne's Atticus, and you haven't hung out yet with Connolly's Ray Lily, then you're totally missing out.
Ray is a wooden man; basically the red shirt of the Twenty Palaces Society. He goes in and distracts the bad guys so the mages can destroy them. Needless to say, this isn't a long-lived profession. Ray has just come off of book two where a lot of people were killed in the collateral damage of destroying a bunch of predators.
Ray is sick of death, and unhappy with how Twenty Palaces and his boss, Annalise, seem to have no compunction about killing off innocents to save the world from the predators.
An old friend pops in and tells him "I'm dying and its your fault", disappears, and sets Ray on a path back to his Southern California roots as a small time car thief. But all the members from his gang seem to have gained a special power, and are mixed up with an old enemy of Ray.
Predators are on the loose, and Ray has to face the heartbreaking question of whether the ends justifies the means in a personal way.
That is what makes this book stand out from the others. Not only do we get the non-stop action, the clever use of Ray's "ghost knife" in fights, and delve deeper into the secrets and background of both Ray himself and the Twenty Palaces society, but we get more fleshed out moral quandries both from Ray, and a bit of humanity from Annalise.
I've heard this is the last, contracted book in the series, and I for one am sad to see Ray go just when he was blossoming. Still, the ending has a satisfying potential for Ray to play a bigger part in Twenty Palaces (as he seems to be the only one getting results these days according to Annalise) and some loose ends are tied up.
This Book's Snack Rating: Like gnoshing on a bag of Wasabi peas for the addictive action and gradual, spicy heat of the layered moral quandries
I really enjoyed the first two books, but only at the 4 star level. I think this the first time in my reading career I've ever given a 5 start review to the third book in a series when the other two were 4 stars.
If you like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden or Kevin Hearne's Atticus, and you haven't hung out yet with Connolly's Ray Lily, then you're totally missing out.
Ray is a wooden man; basically the red shirt of the Twenty Palaces Society. He goes in and distracts the bad guys so the mages can destroy them. Needless to say, this isn't a long-lived profession. Ray has just come off of book two where a lot of people were killed in the collateral damage of destroying a bunch of predators.
Ray is sick of death, and unhappy with how Twenty Palaces and his boss, Annalise, seem to have no compunction about killing off innocents to save the world from the predators.
An old friend pops in and tells him "I'm dying and its your fault", disappears, and sets Ray on a path back to his Southern California roots as a small time car thief. But all the members from his gang seem to have gained a special power, and are mixed up with an old enemy of Ray.
Predators are on the loose, and Ray has to face the heartbreaking question of whether the ends justifies the means in a personal way.
That is what makes this book stand out from the others. Not only do we get the non-stop action, the clever use of Ray's "ghost knife" in fights, and delve deeper into the secrets and background of both Ray himself and the Twenty Palaces society, but we get more fleshed out moral quandries both from Ray, and a bit of humanity from Annalise.
I've heard this is the last, contracted book in the series, and I for one am sad to see Ray go just when he was blossoming. Still, the ending has a satisfying potential for Ray to play a bigger part in Twenty Palaces (as he seems to be the only one getting results these days according to Annalise) and some loose ends are tied up.
This Book's Snack Rating: Like gnoshing on a bag of Wasabi peas for the addictive action and gradual, spicy heat of the layered moral quandries
elliottback's review
2.0
A weak conclusion to the Twenty Palaces, it tries to fill in the knowledge gaps, but without really taking us on any kind of adventure.
mparker546's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I like the progress that the series is making, we're seeing glimpses of the wider world.
gabtpr's review
4.0
Just devoured the whole series and liked them all but this was the best book of the bunch for me. I dig the whole noirish tone of the series - for some reason I kept feeling that Ray should be wearing a trench coat with the collar turned up. Ray Lilly is a wonderful character and I hope that Mr. Connolly will give us another story. Otherwise, I'm going to miss him.