3.5 stars

Durance is the 7th book of Lyn Gala's urban fantasy series, Aberrant Magic. Her Facebook post said that this book closed the "first season". I don't know whether the "second" season will feature new characters or new places altogether. In any case, Durance returns to the original couple, Kavon and Darren.

This time the big bad Ifrit finally makes itself known -- and alongside his "bad" villain -- they are wrecking havoc in D.C.. It's up to Kavon, Darren, and their team, as well as their guides to stop the horrible Ifrit War to happen.

I am afraid that I still feel a bit lost here and there regarding how the shaman, guide, and their universe works (the additional Native shaman and their "walking" doesn't help *laugh*). However, Kavon, Darren, and the team makes up for it. Darren and Bennu are awesome. Kavon is still a bit too rigid for my taste. I try to understand his motivation, but I'm worried I can't really grasp it.

The final confrontation is good though. Things seem to settle down for our characters...mm-fantasy-pnr-futuristic-scifi mm-romance-or-erotica mm-wizards-mages4 s Dumbledore11214507

Darren and Kavon have finally hit their stride, both personally and professionally. The team is expanding, the FBI finally understands the importance of Talent-based law enforcement, and Kavon and Darren have settled into a strong partnership. They are prepared for the long wait until the evil ifrit reappear on Earth, and they plan to be ready. However, when the first of these ancient powers returns, their preparation might not be as complete as they had assumed and the dangers they face are much more than either of them had expected.

Worse, old faces from Kavon's past force him to look at the choices he has made in his life--the choices that have defined him as a man, a lover, and an agent. How can he believe in anything when he loses faith in himself? His relationship with Darren is the one touchstone that allows him to hold on through the storm that follows the reappearance of the exiled ifrit. But if Kavon and Darren are not strong enough--if their love or their guides falter for even a moment--the lives of every magic user, every shaman, and every human on Earth may be forfeit.


Review:

Dear Lyn Gala,

I read and reviewed all previous six books in this series . Overall I really d them. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that book seven was out. Readers, if you are interested in checking it out, please don't start with this book - while couple of books ago the story became a little more episodic, you will miss the development of the relationship between our main couple and you will miss the overarching story line about magic and magical guides from another worlds coming back to our world.

While I still loved the main characters and many secondary characters and really enjoyed the world, I was also disappointed in this book. I have read it in three hours, I was that eager and excited, but when I finished I basically thought to myself - that's it?

And it is actually quite hard to explain why I thought that. When we finished the book six, it was quite clear that soon evil ifrit will show up in our world, and author does not change the game in the mid-air. They indeed show up and wreak some havoc, but I guess it did not feel scary to me? It felt disappointingly small? I mean someone gets hurt pretty badly, but I just did not feel much danger.

Maybe this is the best way to describe it. As a reader, when I look for a new book and read the , I tend to discount which say oh I expected this and the book did not deliver, so the book is bad because it did not deliver on my expectations. I am convinced that I should attempt to discuss the story which is on page, not the story I expected to be on page. However, all of this only relevant to me when we are talking about stand alone books. ( does anyone write stand alone books these days anyway?) or first books in the series. I feel that when we are talking about seventh book in the series, it is basically impossible to not have at least some expectations formed *by the previous books in the series*. I expected the start of the war to be something awful and scary and terrible, nothing more specific than that and I did not feel I got that.

Adventure plot still delivered some nice moments, but I truly enjoyed it maybe in the last ten or fifteen percent of the story.

I appreciate Darren and Kavon going strong, I even don't mind that they still argue about each other's dominant character traits . One may say that this is repetitive, but to me it is realistic, I don't think Kavon's over protectiveness is going anywhere for example, so it makes sense to me that same argument may pop up at times.

I them and other team members, but I really would love more BANG in the next book if it comes.

Grade: C+/B-This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full reviewestablished-couple m-m-romance magic ...more3 s Sammy Higgins432 7

This was the last book in the series, and we are finally back with Darren and Kavon. I have missed them.

The evil ifrit are making an appearance and causing havoc. They don't know who the Shaman is, but the ifrit is one badass! They have to work to stop the evil ifrit and finally tell the team about the threat.

There is a lot of anger in this book, especially from Kavon. Someone from his past appears, and it causes him some anger and frustration. He is not great at expressing his feelings and holds them in. It sometimes leads to some blowouts. You can understand his feelings, especially after hearing everything he has been through. I'm just glad that he has Darren.

There were some editing issues, and they drove me mad. The names kept changing, missing punctuation and general editing issues. It really needs proofreading better.

I d the conclusion and the big built-up, but I did get lost at times. There was a lot of information thrown at us, and it got confusing at times. The fact that everyone was angry drove me mad! I did love the story, and I hope we do see more of this pair.age-gap established-couple fantasy ...more2 s Teresa3,528 41

3.5 stars

I’ve enjoyed this series and I did enjoy this book but I didn’t feel as connected to the characters as I had in the past. The suspense and action were there but the relationship felt forced which was disappointing, especially considering this is an established couple.

There were a lot of editing errors with wrong names and broken sentences. I hate when secondary characters are referred to by both first and last names interchangeably without seeing both names together; It makes it feel there are twice the number of characters. kindle law-military magic-users ...more2 s Levi483 17

I dis so much when dumbing happens to MC'S...this book was bad ...i skip read it more than 60% because of the over repeating...Kavon become sort of a bully.
The name changes of ifrit was childish and superficial ... the 1st 3 book of the series is good but than it took a nosedive...1 John-Torleif Harris2,669 12

Lots of action, but I'm left with some worldbuilding questions

This book had a great pace and kept up the excitement through to the end. I got the feeling that this is the last book in this series, which I am ok with since it was a very satisfactory tie up for everything that has happened. But, the one loose end, that may mean future installments is that the issue with the Durance, as a whole, isn't really resolved.

Will the rest of the Durance avoid Earth due to fear of Anzu's fate? Will the Docent leave as well, for the same reason? Will both sides seek to interfere more? I also thought that there was a much larger build-up for the Native American involvement than what actually happened.

Also, why are there only three magical traditions in the world? What about the Chinese? The Indians? Sub-Saharan Africa? Australia? Polynesia? There are so many cultures that wouldn't have been influenced by either the Vatican out the Egyptians for a very long time, post-Purge.1 Heather90 2

That's the end?

I got the impression that this is the end of the series and if that's the case then the plot of the last three books is a hot mess. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it most of the time, but there were a lot of things that made no sense.

Spoiler alert

Why are we learning new names for the ifirt in the seventh book? And why were so many new characters introduced that had no real importance in the plot and did nothing to deal with the actual battle against the ifrit? And all this hype about magical sinks all over the world and how they would fight all these evil ifrit and they fight one and that's it? "We won"? What was the point of Art and Zach if they didn't do anything to help? Why not just make Bennu powerful enough to fight Anzu with Kavon's bull helping? What was the point of Angel and Julie? Why not just have Thula explain the ifrit at the end? Boyd's part in shooting Butler was so minimal why make it so he needed help? If he's such a great snyper with so much experience with shamans why does he need help? It's all so confusing.

90% percent of the characters are angry, or enraged and cruel most of the time. Sometimes their anger was justified but most of time it made no sense. Half the time I couldn't even understand why Kavon was getting mad. Why did the conversation with Milton make him so angry? Sure the guy was annoying but not that much. Why was it such a big deal that Kavon called Darren a tween? It was really stressful reading about so many of the characters being angry so much of the time. I would have d to see the characters have a greater range of emotions. I'm not getting why two relationships where Darren is jealous equates to a lifetime of insecurity. But it just had to keep beating the dead horse about his reaction to Ben Anderson. It got kind of old. We get it they're not perfect. Enough already. I really thought Salma's purpose was to train Darren but we didn't spend any time seeing that training and book after book of her working the Dedje centers. Who cares? How does that move the plot along?

The copy editing could really use some work. There was a paragraph break in the middle of a sentence among other things that were really jarring. Rima was called Rita once. Darren was called Darian and Butler was called Smith. Character Pov's got switched in a few sentences and that was confusing.

All in all the series is pretty good. I could have done without Art and Angel's books. Not because they were bad but because it was tiresome to read about these new angry characters when they weren't necessary for the overall plot. Kavon is always angry, and Coretta is angry, Les is angry, Rima is angry, Art is angry, and Angel is angry. Halverson is a jerk and Dave and Thuya and Smith and Julie how many jerks does a story need? Maybe there will be another book that explains all this? If so I hope there's a little less anger and fewer unnecessary characters. PaperMoon1,635 68

We're back to focusing on main MCs Darren and Kavon after a couple of previous titles elsewhere. Their relationship is more stabilized - with Kavon still exhibiting a propensity toward rushing into 'he-man' protect-mode and Darren still firmly staking his ground on not being sidelined in action (this can get a little wearing though). Despite the FBI team still being understaffed I'm struggling to keep up with the many secondary characters introduced throughout this seven book series (to date) - so readers should refresh their memory with synopses of previous titles before embarking on this or endure some floundering brought upon by lots of names, organizations and past-event references.

The magic/power/talent and world building is still as complex as ever ... with the impending threat of an ifrit-based armegeddon taking a step closer to reality with the discovery of the first (as far as we know) imprisonment breakout of a malevolent ifrit not just in the spirit-realm but into our MCs AU world. The author adds further definition to the ifrit by having Darren and others label the 'good guys' (e.g. Bennu, Pochi etc) as 'docent' and the 'bad guys' as 'durance'. To be fair - there is some philosophical discussion near the end as to whether combatants are 'good' or 'bad', that intentions and ideology inform/compel 'action'. I know other readers have complained about 'too much tell and not enough show' but I think this is necessary at times given the complexities of the world building etc.

There are a couple of 'hawt' M-M action scenes thrown in for those who want their 'romance with spice' but I could bypass these easily to focus on the main plot 'drama'. The HFN ending also seem to indicate a few more titles to come although a couple of over-arching plot threads were completed/resolved with Kavon coming to greater self-awareness and Darren becoming more tolerant of what drives his lover. 3 stars overall. Tiuri415

Four stars rounded up from three stars because I love the characters but the storyline not so much. I felt Kavon was acting decidedly un-Kavon- throughout this book. Some of it was understandable, given the previous books and some of the realisations he came to in this book but overall he came across as too angry, too inconsiderate of his new colleagues especially but his old colleagues as well.
Bennu was absent for most of the book, which was a real shame because his interactions with Darren were always a highlight of the earlier books.
I also did not the whole Durance and Docent thing, it felt confusing and completely unnecessary. Then there is the ending, the climax of a 7-book series, I say climax when in fact it was rather anticlimactic. One big Boss-fight and that was it. based on the previous books I had expected something more apocalyptic.
Finally, this was one of those books in which sex solves all problems, in one instance it literally heals multiple people. So, as much as I adore the original trilogy and d books 4-6, this final one of this "season" failed to inspire the same adoration. It was well written but the increased number of characters meant that the newer secondary characters remained rather vague stereotypes.
In the end this was enjoyable but slightly disappointing, unfortunately.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full reviewfantasy gromance dee~284 3

I was really looking forward to reading this book, once I saw it was out. Though it had a lot of action, many new revelations, and a good look into the relationship between Darren and Kavon, it didn't wow me some of the previous books in the series did.queer-fiction Shelley2,780 19

3.75 stars2020 mm mm-challenge-2020 ...more Bibliophile850

3.5 stars Kathryn Baron874 3

The series is OK. It keeps my interest enough to finish, but I doubt I'll bother re-reading. Just never really cared enough.2022 J.840 3

2.6-2.8/52023 Jenn (not Lily)4,323 29

4.5 stars
A perfect ending to the series!gifted magic mm-romance Andrea2,798 15

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