Steel’s Edge

Steel’s Edge (2012) Ilona Andrews

According to Ilona Andrews, this is the last book in the Edge series. In the future they may write in this world (and about some of these characters) again, but as it is, they’re done with The Edge series.

Second point, this is a relatively long book. Although the story focuses on Charlotte and Richard, we spend a fair amount of time with some of the characters that have been introduced throughout the series. I’m good with this, but I’m not sure how someone who picked this book up without having read the previous books would feel about that.

So, the story.

Charlotte is the Healer. Her talent for healing manifested at a very young age, and so her parents gave her up so she could be trained to live up to her tremendous gift. Unfortunately for her, none of that training taught her how to deal with a failed marriage.

Since moving to the Weird, Richard has made it his goal to take down the slaver network that destroyed much of his family. He too has a failed marriage in his past, but like Charlotte has dedicated himself to his work.

Together, THEY FIGHT CRIME!

Ok. Sorry. I suck at writing synopses.

I very much like Charlotte and Richard. Both have been damaged by their pasts, and throw themselves into helping others. Both get themselves into bad situations, but they do it because they are trying to help other people, not because they’re TSTL.

I also really enjoyed the amount of time we spent with George and Jack and Sophie. I believe it says something about Ilona Andrews’ writing that I was pleased to spend so much time with the secondary characters, because I cared about what had happened to them as well.

I did have two small issues. First, the major subplot with George and Jack was seemingly dropped. I suppose they were dealing with the issue in the background, but we spent so much time with George and Jack initially, it seemed weird how the aftermath of their issue just disappeared. But as I said, this was already a long book, so I understand why, but it just felt odd.

Second, I wasn’t sure about Charlotte’s “big confrontation” at the end. I felt a bit confused by what happened, but that may have been due to the fact that I stayed up past my bedtime because I HAD to finish this book, so I probably wasn’t completely clear-headed when I read it.

If you haven’t read any other books in the edge series, you should be perfectly fine reading this book, although, as I said, you might not appreciate the time spent with the secondary characters.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Ace

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