Runes of Fall Inheritance #9
Superhero Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, LGBTQ Fantasy
Ravensword Press;
May 26, 2023
Kindle
392
Amazon
No storm bows to reason.
Quentin's trip to the desert with his chosen family is supposed to be two days of testing the limits of their powers. Instead, a violent storm looms on the horizon, and nothing will alter its course.
The storm has a name: Nate Anderson. Demigod, supremacist, leader of a neo-Nazi Übermensch cabal... and father to Quentin's latest ward, Mel. He means to take her home, and won't let a ragtag group of "inferior" psychics get in his way.
Besieged and outgunned, Quentin is trapped in a no-win scenario. No matter which way he turns, one fateful night will change him forever.
Review by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
While it’s awkward to drop into the middle of a series, it’s also telling, a good test of the author’s ability to engage their readers regardless of how much backstory they know. “Runes of Fall” is in fact part four of the second season of the Inheritance series, which centers of the evolving relationship between two more-than-human people, Laurence Riley, and Quentin d’Arcy (neither of whose surnames actually appear in book 9).
Laurence, with powers of pre-cognition, magic, and problems with addiction, loves Quentin, the painfully proper child of English nobility, whose powers are, so far, not fully understood. Together, as this book starts, they are managing a houseful of teenagers with varying emergent superpowers in La Jolla. Laurence and Quen have taken the group to Disneyland, although Quen is so sheltered that he is almost more overwhelmed by the Magic Kingdom than any of the teens are.
Among the kids on the field trip to Anaheim is Melanie, known as Mel, a runaway recently incorporated into the household when she stole Quentin’s phone. Mel’s history is unknown to her new housemates, and the revelation of that mystery is the driver of this book’s sometimes hair-raising narrative.
All of these folks have backstories—including Laurence and Quentin. As the plot develops, we learn bits and pieces about each of the teenagers, revealing them to be good kids who have had to face hard choices in a world often unfriendly to their powers. Mel finds herself in a nurturing environment for the first time in her young life, yet unable to fully trust these fellow youngsters or the eccentric gay men who are supposedly the responsible adults in their lives.
When, in the middle of a desert camping weekend with a rock star and his celebrity sister (their story must be from an earlier book, but they’re wonderful characters), Mel’s background suddenly looms as a threat. The whole patchwork family must work together or lose everything. Laurence and Quentin must push themselves to their limits, even as they challenge the teenagers to figure out how to use their powers to help the people they care about.