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A review by kblincoln
Circle of Enemies by Harry Connolly
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