A review by ronmccutchan
Hidden by Benedict Jacka

4.0

Jacka seems to be exploring what he can do in terms of the magical environment. In this installment, it's the idea of a shadow realm (bubble of artificial reality created by a mage), with a side-visit to a new magical creature (a blink-fox), which I'm assuming will reappear in future installments. Still great character work, but one of the things I really enjoyed in the first few books was the play between real-world London and the magical realm (one of the things I also particularly like about Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series). These past few Alex Verus novels seem to be less "muggle" and more entirely "Hogwarts." Makes sense as Jacka digs deeper into his featured characters, but I wish things weren't quite so hermetic (literally so in terms of the shadow realm idea!).