Fun but not a lot of depth. Everything happens a little too neatly to be believable. ( )

Maddie is a bad ass and never gives up. Even when the odds are against her, she does what she needs to do to protect herself and her friends.

However, these books are so similar that the storyline is getting tiring. I would love to see something new thrown into the mix. ( )

There is no downtime between books as Maddy deals with the death of her husband and finding out she is pregnant. This book goes from one battle to the next as she coming to realize that no one give her any breathing room to recover from last battle and charge into the next mess. The sad thing is she knows she is being played by Lucifer and yet hasn't found a way to deal with him without ending up doing exactly what he planned. Super fast paced book and new possible ally / antagonist introduced in the form of Puck.
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Still grieving and pregnant, Maddy, a band of the fallen and of course Beezle, seek to avenge Gabriel and stop the renagade Azazel from completing his dastardly plans. Maddie is also being hunted by the fairies who want her dead, like yesterday. So she has to deal with that too.

These books just keep getting better and better. Maddie is such a wild card but things always seem to work out for her. She has magic and a tendency to gain the loyalty of others, even though she constantly leads them into dangerous situations. You would think they would all be staying at minimum safe distance, but somehow they go with her time after time. There is plenty of action and humor. The characters are also developing, not just staying the same, which is nice. This may be the best book so far. ( )

This is the fourth book in the Madeline Black series. It was a solid installment in this series, if not the best one in the series. The fifth book in the series, Black City, is scheduled for a Feb 2013 release.

Madeline Black finds out from Lucifer that she is pregnant with Gabriel's baby. Now she not only has to evade numerous assassination attempts from the Faerie court, she also has to hunt down her father to revenge Gabriel, and keep her unborn child out of Lucifer's hands. All of this while she continues to grieve for Gabriel.

This story was fast-paced and has a lot going on. Definitely more of an urban fantasy than PNR. These are always interesting books because, while they don’t always have a clear story or objective, there is always a lot happening and it’s engaging.

Maddie has embraced her power and isn’t afraid to destroy everything in her path to get to a goal. This book is interesting because she is forced to temper her behavior slightly to allow for her pregnancy. I do enjoy how powerful she has become and how she is always kicking someone’s butt.

My favorite character in this series continues to be Beezle the gargoyle; he just adds so much witty banter and humor to the story. Simon and JB are also running support for Maddie and it was great to have them be part of the story as well.

The other character that features in the story that I was surprised to enjoy is Nathaniel. He is in the story a lot because he is assigned by Lucifer to guard Maddie. He is becoming a more complex character and you couldn’t help but feel a bit bad for him at times.

We delve a lot deeper into the faerie realms in this book and I really enjoyed all the crazy faerie creatures that try to hunt Maddie down. There are some seriously creepy faerie creatures in this book and I loved reading about them.

I do like that they were some big revelations with Maddie’s character; I think this book paved the way for her to really grow and change in future books. She is finally embracing her godlike heritage.

My only complaint is that Maddie is a bit too lucky and powerful and is continually getting out of situations she shouldn't be able to get out of. She tends to blast her way through situations that she could probably talk her way out of. While I enjoy the action scenes; I do feel like Maddie’s overzealousness and crazy luck is a bit over the top.

Overall I really enjoyed this story. Fans of the this series should be happy with this installment. We meet some new and interesting fairy creatures. We also get to see Maddie go through some big changes. Maddie’s continual ability to escape impossible situations unscathed does get a bit old, but I do enjoy the fast pace of the story and all of the interesting characters. I recommend this series to fans of urban fantasy. There are better urban fantasy series out there, but this is still a solid one that I enjoy reading. ( )