Posted by The MC, Innah, is a 28 year old retired agent who falls into the trope of “they keep pulling me back in”. Before being discharged/quitting the agency she signed a contract that said if the agency ever needed to her help that she would be obligated to help them. I found this to be a little odd, but whatever.
So, she’s being called back to duty because there has been a long string of murders and it’s likely the fault of a cult. In this world there are the “supes” and the “mundanes” with the supes having superpowers and the mundanes being magicless. Innah exists in a rare position in the middle of these two classes of people. She’s known as “Sensitive” because she was hauled into another dimension and lived there for several years making her sensitive to magic when she was returned back to the human dimension. So, although she was born mundane, now she can detect and determine what kind of magic is being used, where it’s being used, and who’s using it. She makes for the perfect special agent… if she hadn’t already quit.
She doesn’t want to be on this new mission but the boss man is promising to break her contract and make this mission her last mission — for real this time. She takes the deal and goes to a place known as Golden Fields to investigate these murders. It turns out that she was also a victim of a cult a long time ago and they had tried to leave her out of this as best they could, but things got too serious and they needed her help before more people die.
I really enjoyed the voice of the main character, she has a strength to her, a little sassy, and is self aware of her own shortcomings. She knows that she’s impulsive sometimes, and runs too hot on her emotions, and reflects on how she could have done better and will do better in the future. She’s got a conscience that makes her job difficult since she’s been sent there to observe and not to intervene… but she feels like she has get involved to in order to save lives, but doing so jeopardizes her mission.
I wanted a little bit more from the world building as far as bigger picture and the world at large. I feel like this is set on an alternate Earth, but I don’t know how deep the impacts run having both magical and non magical entities together on a large scale. What I mean by that is how is the government run, how are other governments run, how do they interact? How does the rest of the world handle the divide between the mundanes and supes? I know that people who have magic in her country have to register themselves or pay a fine and serve jail time depending on the level of offense, but I don’t know much else. There is a magical police force and then there’s the mundane police force — but does that also translate to the military? All that said, the world building was presented was fun and entertaining and I enjoyed myself with it. There are all sorts of magical abilities, some more common than others, and all sorts of power levels. There are magical creatures as well, there were beings called the Grosh which were a little difficult for me to picture in my head, but they were described as interdimensional beings kind of like a Jinn that pops in and out of our world, never staying for too long. I believe it was their dimension that she lived for several years which made her Sensitive to magic.
The writing is what really caught my attention. The opening was as follows, “Bad news came on Mondays. I learned that when I was still a kid. at twenty-eight, that rule still applied. It was Monday when I almost died. Monday when my surrogate father abandoned me in the unforgiving wilderness. Monday when I killed for the first time and marked a journey stained with pain and bloodshed. Monday when my mentor and only friend met his demise.” As I said in other reviews, I tend to prefer a more modern tone and dialogue style, this sort of style just jives with me better.
The pacing was super quick. This is not a long book at around 239 pages it’s actually quite short. Everything that was on page had relevance to the plot or character development and that was pretty satisfying. As I mentioned earlier, I actually would have liked a little more about the world and the people in it outside of this one town we get to learn about. It could have done with some bulking up but if you’re looking for a streamlined story you can get into quickly, this is that. We know right from the first chapter or two who our character is, what her past has been like, and what task she has been assigned, and why it’s important, for me this lets me sink into the story super quickly and assists with the pacing.
Overall, I would recommend this to anyone who wants something fun, fast, and with a spunky detective lead who’s hunting the occult.
I completed this book and so at the time of this review this book is being marked SAFE.