Some authors show leaps and bounds of improvement between books. The prose seems too close to the first novel and I wonder if these were written around the same time. It's solid book for the author to deliver. The character has issues picking up on nuances and emotions yet still feels. He seems a bit removed from people and emotions. This reinforces my belief that he is not functioning normally on the mental spectrum. Character growth continues as does Alexey's strange, sometimes distant, mannerisms. Backed up by a biker gang of were-cats and a disturbingly attractive Biomancer, Alexi must recover the kids and regain his magic, a dangerous and deadly mission that will test them all to the limit.Īn improvement over the first novel, which is not to say anything was wrong with the former. Someone like Alexi: currently ex-magus, hitman, and reluctant finder of lost children.Ī chance meeting results in Alexi joining forces with the shapeshifters against a mutual enemy, but street justice is rarely as simple as putting a bullet through someone's head. Frustrated by weeks of botched Government investigation, the werecreatures of New York City are searching for an Occult expert capable of doing the dirty work the police cannot. Their adoptive parents, leaders in New York’s shapeshifter community, are brutally murdered by someone – or something – with incredible magical and physical power.

While Alexi Sokolsky is hiding on the streets from the Russian Mafia, twenty supernaturally-gifted children are kidnapped from a foster home.

Stained Glass by James Osiris Baldwin