A review by tsparr
Ebony Gate by Ken Bebelle, Julia Vee

3.0

 This was an easy, fun read, but what really threw me off were my own expectations going in. This book was sold to me with the tagline of "female John Wick story with dragon magic set in contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown." (emphasis mine), and that set me up into thinking this would be just a continual action, revenge whirlwind. What I got was a retired assassin having to re-enter the world they thought they'd escaped. Definitely John Wick-esque, but skewed differently than I was expecting. The world-building is solid and there's a lot of interesting and unique ideas thrown at you, but again like John Wick, expect to have to pick up the majority of things by context clues. I'll be reading the sequel.