Bingo Square: I
If you pay attention to the writing duo/married couple behind the pen name Ilona Andrews, you know that they every once in a while publish serialized stories on their website/blog, and often these intended short stories turn into novellas or full novels. Apparently, half of them are also aware of this while one still thinks they really could keep it to a short story.
If you enjoy Ilona Andrews, you’ll see a lot of types that reoccur throughout their fiction – highly capable main characters, mercenary guilds, unique pets, and more. This one also has a tie in to the Innkeeper Chronicles later on but you’ll be totally fine if you haven’t read those, you’ll just recognize at least one species if you have.
While I liked quite a bit about this one and am intrigued to see where this goes next, I’m settling on a 3. A lot of the novel was Ada participating in battles, and as much I enjoy these types of books, I actually don’t really enjoy super descriptive action or battle scenes (my brain just doesn’t really turn it into images so it’s kind of whatever).
However, I really liked the initial set up and character introductions. Earth has been dealing with inter-dimensional breaches for the past decade, some people have developed powers, called talents, and the breaches rely on tunnels that humans can enter and mine for valuable materials before they open. Ada is one of those powered people with an especially rare and valuable talent but since hers is classified as a non-combat power, when she is left behind after a mining extraction goes horribly wrong, she is assumed dead. We also meet the guild leader for the firm that was responsible for Ada’s security, and Elias is not happy about his team’s failure in protocol. I actually wanted more Elias scenes because that was where more of the group dynamics were occurring while Ada had all of the action scenes (though there were some nice, quieter moments that go a bit more into her past).
Overall, there was lots to like and even more to look forward to. It’s already a well developed world with lots of potential to expand, and I expect the next story set in this world will balance the action and character interactions/world building more in the way I tend to prefer.