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Welcome to Dim Sum Asylum: a San Francisco where it’s a ho-hum kind of case when a cop has to chase down an enchanted two-foot-tall shrine god statue with an impressive Fu Manchu mustache that's running around Chinatown, trolling sex magic and chaos in its wake.
Senior Inspector Roku MacCormick of the Chinatown Arcane Crimes Division faces a pile of challenges far beyond his human-faerie heritage, snarling dragons guarding C-Town’s multiple gates, and exploding noodle factories. After a case goes sideways, Roku is saddled with Trent Leonard, a new partner he can’t trust, to add to the crime syndicate family he doesn’t want and a spell-casting serial killer he desperately needs to find.
While Roku would rather stay home with Bob the Cat and whiskey himself to sleep, he puts on his badge and gun every day, determined to serve and protect the city he loves. When Chinatown’s dark mystical underworld makes his life hell and the case turns deadly, Trent guards Roku’s back and, if Trent can be believed, his heart... even if from what Roku can see, Trent is as dangerous as the monsters and criminals they’re sworn to bring down.
4 out of 5 (very good)
Independent Reviewer for Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!
I must be the slowest snail on the block, I really must!! There I was, reading this, and the thought hits me "I've read this before. Where have I read this before. Who stole Rhys Ford's work. How did they get it before it was released" All those thoughts hit me, and I got as far as writing at email to Ms Ford, telling her all this stoopid stuff going through my head.
THEN!! Then I read that little bit at the top of the blurb bit, saying its an expanded full length version of a short that appeared in the Charmed and Dangerous Anthology (published August 2015) But I didn't write a review for it, and I must have read at least this one. So, apologies Ms Ford, for being such a duh!
So, the book. An extremely well written book, with all the delights that Ford throws at us from San Francisco and China Town and the Arcane Crimes Division. Full of those little things she chucks in, you know the ones?? The ones that make you think "say what now??" and "did he just say that?" and "what did he just say?? no, that can't be so!" The ones that make ME slow down, and have to go back because, I'm sure he didn't just do what he did after that! Those sorts of things, this book is full of and I did love that.
BUT
For me, and this pains me deeply to say, this book didn't quite do it. I've no bloody idea why, either. It's told only from Roku's point of view, in the first. And I didn't mind that here. Yes of course I wanted to hear from Trent, but once I'd resigned myself to the fact he doesn't have a say, I was okay with it.
I should also mention this. While READING, I could hear (or at least a semblance of) Greg Tremblay. I could hear him reading this to me, and it makes me really really wish I had waited for (any possible) audio version of this book, because, while I'm not a fan of READING single point of view, when it comes to LISTENING, I do enjoy single point of view more.
And I'm beginning to waffle. So I'll stop now, because waffling does not make for a good review.
4 solid stars, (and I'm sorry I didn't love it!) **same worded review will appear elsewhere**
* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and my comments here are my honest opinion. *
Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and was a 2016 LAMBDA finalist with her novel, Murder and Mayhem. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications. She’s also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? She shares the house with Yoshi, a grumpy tuxedo cat and Tam, a diabetic black pygmy panther, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.