Urban Fantasy

When she returned from Afghanistan, Kera took a job in a café just to make ends meet. Then one night as she is taking the trash out to the dumpster in the back alley she runs into a man attacking a woman. She steps in and is stabbed in the chest. As she is about to take her last breath, the Norse goddess Skuld makes her an offer. If she joins with her minions, the crows she can have a second chance at life. But the price is she must deliver Skuld’s judgement to humans who are deemed deserving of death.

So, that sounds promising and there are definitely great moments. Moments that could have been pulled right out of a favorite graphic novel. But the book is a bit of a mess. It suffers from way too many POVs, things happen for no apparent reason, and there are characters whose purpose for being in the book is tantamount to a child being given the role of a mushroom in the school play. Who knows, maybe they’re important in the coming books, maybe the many POVs start to make sense as the series develops … but this book needs to stand on its own and I’m sorry to say it didn’t.

And the icing on the cake is a cover that makes no sense. I mean presumably that’s supposed to be Ludvig, and I guess he’s the hero, though really secondary character. He’s also described as scruffy, hairy and having a beard. That isn’t a beard. That’s designer fuzz.

OK maybe I should quite bitching….of wait. Bitching. The number of times one female character refers to another female character as “bitch” is close to 50. So maybe it’s just me but aren’t we better than this? Haven’t we moved on? It really doesn’t add anything to the story and honestly I was kind of over it after the third “get the bitch” before page ten.

Orange, Red, Yellow. What it means:  red-orange-yellow-guide