Cursed Moon in the second installation in the Prospero’s War series by Jaye Wells. I really should have written the review a week ago when I finished reading, but I have just not found the time until now. I was pretty excited to read this book, and since I was not able to get this one early, I had to wait until mid-month to pick it up in a month I already knew was going to be hectic. With that in mind and my bad excuses out of the way, I apologize for not getting this out there earlier.

Since this is the second book, I am going to assume that anyone reading this has already read Dirty Magic, the first book. With that assumption, I will not need to summarize the characters or magic system. If you would like a look back, check out my review of Dirty Magic, which I really, really enjoyed. With that out of the way, let us jump into Cursed Moon. We join Kate Prospero a few months after the events of Dirty Magic. She is still part of the MEA task force, on loan from the BPD.  With everything that happened in the first story, there is plenty of stress in Kate’s life including her brother Danny who she is raising, her law enforcement career, and her guilt over her recent use of magic. To add to this, a blue moon is coming right around Halloween. This moon has a profound impact on magic. It has effects on adepts and potions. With the impending moon, a crazed lunatic decides to stir up some mayhem in Babylon. Kate’s MEA team now needs to track this psycho down before he does too much damage to the city.

Let me get this out of the way first: I really liked this book. Basically everything I liked about the first one carried over and even improved. Since the main characters were already very well defined, Wells took the time to give depth to some of the secondary characters. Some history also comes out to refine the already well developed ones. Kate certainly grows and her views and feeling change a lot since the last book. One other character that I was very excited to learn more about was good old Uncle Abe. Other than the characterization, I love the language used in the book. The conversations are wonderful. I don’t mean to say that the words are particularly elegant, they are not. What they are is real. This is how people talk. Most of us are not eloquent, in daily life the majority of people are quite the opposite. If you are sensitive to language and easily offended, this probably is not for you. Also, if you are one of those people, Chaucer is not for you and you’re really missing out on some great stuff. People talk like this. Always have, always will. This is exactly why I loved it. The language used is so real and true to life. If you are reading a book where low lives, drug (potion) pushers, pimps, whores, killers are using sanitized language, you’re really missing something and I cannot see how someone can get wholly absorbed in a story unless the world is entirely absorbing and realistic. The raw, crass dialogue felt and read so incredibly natural. There is no forced language that is trying to be edgy, in fact Kate even comments on certain word choices and cringes at others. I do appreciate an author who writes such realistic characters and dialogue.

With development behind us, much of the buddy cop aspects are gone. I see this as a big improvement. You learn more about the team and their rapports. I think they have more interesting and complex relationships now, even with it only being a few months in story time. I really like the way the characters interact this time around. I do not know exactly what to put my finger on to say that I like better, but it just felt better. I know that makes very little sense, or none at all, but that is the only way I can describe what went through my head reading it. I honestly hove only one piece of criticism and that is the resolution of the main story. It was not bad, but it was a little out there, even for this. Honestly though, I kind of saw it coming, so it did not shock me that this was coming.

Even though there was one criticism, I still give this a 5/5. I was tempted to remove a half star with the ending, but I accept that I have to suspend disbelief for a fantasy novel. Besides, I really loved the book so I could not bring myself to lower this score. I absolutely recommend this book, obviously assuming you read the first one. The conclusion to the Prospero’s War series, Deadly Spells, is due for publication in March of 2015. That is something I will be definitely be keeping an eye on. So far I have enjoyed what I have read from Jaye Wells and am looking forward to more.