Review--Deep in the Woods

**Spoilers for The Path of Razors

BLOODY HELL...

With one of the masters of the London Underground in her hands, stuntwoman turned vampire hunter Dawn Madison must fight off the vampire's followers, a vicious pack of undead teenaged girls who put the vamps Dawn had to deal with in Los Angeles to shame.

But Dawn must also wring all the information she can out of her captive. For Costin--her boss and sometime lover--has disappeared into the labyrinth under the girls' school to pursue the other master of the nest. Every moment counts as Dawn and her team race to save Costin, not only from the threat of death but from the more terrible danger that he may succumb to his own vampiric nature--and be lost to them all forever....

The third in the second trilogy of the Vampire Babylon series, Deep in the Woods, was great! It's the 6th book in the series, but the series is seen in forms of trilogies, so the reference to the Los Angeles Underground is in reference to the first trilogy, books 1-3. It's a mouthful to say but does make sense!

Anyway onto the review. My memory is fuzzy on the first two books of the series, or books 4 & 5 in the series as a whole, but can recall some details as they are brought up again. I do remember the last book ending with Dawn and her team catching one of the master vampires of the London Underground and we learned a secret of sorts about this master. Claudius is a shifter of sorts, like Wolfie. He takes on the form of Claudia, another older woman and a cat. He does the Claudia thing to please Wolfie, the other master and that still seems odd to me, which is why I think re-reading The Path of Razors would've been a good idea. Anyway, that's where the story sort of begins, chapter 2.

Dawn and crew have been questioning Claudius trying to get the location of the Underground out of him, but Claudius is a complicated guy. He still cares for Wolfie, but he is realizing that the girls he helped create now resent him or him in Claudia's form--the dual personality/form thing complicates some of my review, but it does make sense when reading the book.

Basically this becomes a search for the Underground and Costin, still in Jonah's body goes off looking for it. Ones more Underground defeated puts him closer to saving his soul and finding peace. But things go wrong, as the BOC tells us, Dawn and crew don't know where he went because they didn't get the location out of Claudius only Costin and one other team member were privy to the information.

There are still other problems and mysteries occurring and even opens up with a mysterious murder. A young man is dying and is recalling the mysterious figure who slew him. We don't find out who this is until the near end of the book. But the mystery behind that said person remains a mystery. **Again, it will make sense once you read it, I don't want to give out too much info for spoiler purposes.

More complications arise as well, what would a book be without more complications. Other problems arise among other characters. Told in third person, the narration changes, as we've seen before and we get to see more of Della and the other girls and see what happens to them. Some things do get resolved in this book, but the ending leads me to believe that there will be more. I don't know for certain, if anyone else knows please share what info you have. The Vampire Babylon series doesn't seem like it's done yet, based on this ending. New problems will arise as they are wont to do.

The characters are still wonderful. Dawn is amazing. Her psychic abilities are still her strong suit and yet she's having more inner problems as well that stem from her short time as a vampire and it's having strange effects on her. Kiko is still having his similar problems that he's been having but seems to be getting better, he and Natalia have a growing friendship that I think, if there is more books, we should hopefully see more of said friendship. Eva is still very interesting as well and is holding a secret over from the last book as well, her little stint with Frank in the last book is still an issue here.

With much intrigue and a lot of secrets this book was an amazing read! I can't wait to see what happens next to Dawn and crew. I'll keep my ear out of the web and will post any info once Chris releases anything regarding the Vampire Babylon series.

I was hoping my next book to read would be Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls, but it didn't come in the mail today and I have a bad feeling it won't come tomorrow either despite my online invoice saying that it should arrive tomorrow. My faith in the postal service has been slim. They don't even update the tracking device very often either. So my next read will finally be Soulless by Gail Carriger, which I have heard many good things about. Until next time readers!