Spellbreaker

This had a slow start for me. Right around the halfway point, the mystery plot picked up and the momentum increased until the ending slammed into place. Since this is a duology, the ending is a cliffhanger with more questions than I've seen in a long time for a narrative. I'm glad I kept with it, I'm interested to see how this turns out. I appreciated the slow burn for Elsie and Bacchus... We don't get a resolution until the second book. If nothing else I'm going to read the second book just to root for a interracial romance!

I did notice a funny quirk in a few descriptions... It only happens a couple times but it was enough for me to notice a pattern that Holmberg (or maybe just Elsie) likes to describe things like stomachs and skeletons as “slapping the ground” or “melting into a puddle” to help explain Elsie's dread. I don't know why this pulled me out of the story, but it did, briefly, to make me chuckle at how odd it seemed before moving on.