I don't know if it's because I've been reading the series straight through (and very fast) but I put this one down half-way through and didn't pick it up until a week later. Too much of a good thing? Maybe. It lost me for a while. Back full force for the end though. Joanna is really a vibrant personality. I enjoy her perspective very much. I do think she can be an idiot sometimes, though--SPOILER------as with when she took the compact Regan left. That was obvious on all levels.

I was thrilled with what romantic developments there were and with some things that needed to be tied off and were. Overall, a good book. Pettersson has a way with keeping tension high and keeping the end a mystery until the last second. I still don't know how Joanna figures out the things she does. ( )

Okay, so there's a plot going on about a doppelganger and who wants to take over Joanna's life. The way it's going to do that is by eating her heart. It's also causing dimensional rifts when it tears through to our dimension to get at Joanna, rifts that could cause so much destruction (end of the world) that her father, the evil Tulpa, wants her to help him destroy it. This should be a straightforward threat, but sometimes the doppelganger actually seems to be helping her.

Meanwhile, Regan, a member of the Shadow Zodiac who we met in a previous book has begun dating Joanna's ex, Ben. She uses this to threaten Jo and intends to kill Ben. At the end, after all of her dreaming of being able to regain her own identity and reunite with Ben, Joanna realizes that the best thing she can do for him (and for herself) is to make him forget all about her so they both can move on and he can be safe.

There's quite a bit in this book about Zane, the comic book artist, and the creepy little Changeling kids that hang out in the store. (This is part of the mythos, established in earlier books. The comic books are actually "Light or Shadow Manuals" and only Light can read Light and Shadow can read Shadow. Joanna, being the Kairos--part Light, part Shadow--can read both. I'd always assumed Zane was just some kid but it turns out he isn't; he's trapped there and has been for decades.

I still adore Joanna blindly. She rushes in, she makes mistakes, and at the end of the day she does the right thing even if it hurts her to do it. I'm looking forward to the next book because I want to see Joanna moving on (maybe with Hunter), learn more about Zane, and hopefully more about Zoe Archer, Joanna's missing mother. ( )

I struggled a bit at first getting into this book. I actually put it down and read Blood Wyne instead. Joanne is struggling with her relationship with Ben or the ability to have one. Regan makes her hurt a mortal and in the process steals Joanne's conduit. There's a doppleganger out for her heart, but Joanne figures out how to deal with her in the end. There's a bit of a wrap up to things at the end of this book that almost leads you to think its the end of the series, but it goes on.... ( )

As much as I like this series I do have a few continuing issues. This is now the third book in the series and beyond a brief mention in book one, the world is still all White. This is absolutely unrealistic for a city like Las Vegas and speaks very much to the authors belief in White supremacy. If you cannot even imagine people of colour, in a world of your creation, it means that we are less than nothing in her mind. The same erasure of course exists for the GLBT community in this book, with the exception of the following line:

"I wasn't going to get into a conversation about transgenders with a kid who read National Geographic for the boobies."(emphasis mine) pg. 177

The use of the word transgenders is absolute dehumanizing though not surprising considering how Pettersson through around the word hermaphrodite in the first book. If I find her choice of words upsetting, I cannot imagine how much more so people who are gender variant find them.

Much of the book centered around the fact that the zodiacs get their importance from their mothers rather than their fathers. As much as this series is about light vs dark it is also matriarchy vs patriarchy. Often this question does not arise in society let alone the media. If you doubt it question why it is most children carry their fathers last name and why it is always a concession to add a mothers name using a hyphen. In much of what Joanna/Oliva does she is directly withstanding her fathers claim on her identity. When we think of the rise of things like purity balls this can be seen as transgressive. Does the daughter naturally belong to her father until ownership can be transferred to a husband or does the daughter have a right to choose her mother or even herself? Indirectly I would say that these are question that Pettersson is seeking to explore with this series.

Read More ( )

I started off loving this series, but by the time book three came around I'd started to lose interest. While I enjoyed some aspects of this book, overall it couldn't hold my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. Consequently, I had a hard time following the story. As it is, I'm not very fond of Joanna's character and can't bring myself to care about her. About halfway through this book, I gave up on this series entirely. ( )