Read Fragment

What a long, strange trip it has been... with flashes of humor, convulsing and convoluted mythology, treachery and loyalty twisting back on each other like snakes, and at long last, some measure of peace for a world that has lost none of its strangeness but just a bit of its peril. Robson does a good job bringing readers up to speed at the start of DOWN TO THE BONE (with prophetic, faery beer, of all things), but even with the bare bones of the conflict laid out, I can't say if new readers would be able to catch up to the complex emotional lives of these characters. Even having read the whole series, I often felt ill-equipped to understand the manic passion and complexity of these creatures more than human.

So much of what brings Lila, Teazle and Zal and their support crew to this end of days is as slippery and inevitable as a maelstrom, sucking everyone down and together into a cataclysmic confrontation. As deeply as Lila mourns and rages, so quickly can she come back to forgiveness. Robson manages to interweave the trickery of faerie into her story without tipping over into "arbitrary". Still, with so much drama and magic flying by, I feel like I absorbed a tenth of what Robson wrote over the course of this series. DOWN TO THE BONE brings all of the surface stories together, creating a satisfying resolution to the adventure portion of the story, even as I know I will still be piecing together the history and mythology of these worlds in the future.

KEEPING IT REAL and DOWN TO THE BONE have the benefit of bracketing this almost overwhelming series, but I think they would remain my favorites regardless for the clear introduction and resolution each has to offer. Upon finishing this series, I feel a little dazed and completely wrung out, but definitely glad I followed this roller coaster from start to finish.

Full review at All Things Urban Fantasy.

Sexual Content: Several sex scenes, references to threesomes.