MOTOR CITY MAGE by Cindy Spencer Pape

Publisher: Carina Press
Date published: 03/12/2012
ISBN: 9781426893384
Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy
E-book
Reviewed by Helen

Weblink: http://ebooks.carinapress.com/38B7C382-94DD-457C-8906-A848E85E5556/10/134/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=377CA1CF-21E6-40F7-B6CE-BA4E172497C9

Obtained via author

(5 hearts)

Wyndewin cop Des Sutton is hopelessly attracted to the self-confident wolf, Lana Novak. Even while she’s driving him mad he wants her more than he could have imagined. And one night is nowhere near enough.

While they are tracking a dangerous new drug, things go wrong and they end in up in another dimension. To get home they have to travel through several other alternate worlds. And by the time they get home there are more problems to solve.

This is the fourth book in Ms. Pape’s “Urban Arcana” series and I particularly enjoyed the neat way she brought previous characters back for an update on their stories, while simultaneously advancing Lana’s story. She did a very tidy job of winding up the series at this point, but I can’t help but hope she’ll revisit it sometime in the future for Dina’s story, at the very least, and maybe Vin’s as well.

As always, this author’s world building is very clever as she mingles the known with new twists. Every one of the worlds Lana and Des visit is distinctive, yet each has its quirks. There’s always something to make the reader smile as well as to surprise them. Even the animals have their role to play, and some of them are just as real as the people. Ms. Pape’s love of animals shines through her writing, even in the “minor” animal characters.

I loved Lana’s smart mouth. She often said some very perceptive things, but with so much humor I couldn’t help but laugh as I cleaned soda off my screen.

But I think the one thing that moved this book up from very good, to brilliant, was her attention to detail. The tiny little things that bring the characters to life with just a few words strategically dropped into the story. Like the bells on Jase’s dreadlocks, or descriptions like “tall, grape, and slimy”, or Des’s reactions to the things Lana says and does.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.