I Hear They Burn for Murder by J.L. Aarne

Special Agent Ezekiel Herod knows the game well, but he's never played it quite like this before. So overall, I had a problem with the head hopping and the mental illness cure, but I really liked the characters and the story.“We're playing Murder in the Dark, Agent.” I don’t actually know what illness it is that he had, but before they fixed it, it had seemed realistic in the sense that, even though he knew he was being irrational and that he was going to face serious consequences if he didn’t get back to his job, he just couldn’t get past it, he couldn’t will it away and force himself to get over it no matter how much he wanted to. In real life though, there is no insta-cure, so I don’t like seeing this in books because it can lead to harmful misunderstandings. The other thing I didn’t like was that they cured James’s mental illness with magic, at least temporarily. I did at least understand why the author gave us Abraham’s POV. I also didn’t care much for any of the POVs other than Dale’s, but other people might enjoy them. I guess I’ve decided that it’s worth it to just deal with the head hopping since it doesn’t happen too often, and I like the characters too much to stop reading now. It’s something that’s especially frustrating to me in these books because, aside from that, the writing is really good and does draw me in. There were a couple things I didn’t like though, the main one being the head hopping, again. Poor Coyote doesn’t understand the nuances of modern human dating, but he tries. And I gotta say, I think Coyote and Daphne may be an even cuter couple than Dale and James, haha. Seeing the dynamic between Dale and Coyote as friends was nice too.

All the main characters in this series are imperfect but mostly lovable (well, if you ignore some of the things they’ve done in the past, especially James). Dale was significantly less of a misanthrope, James seemed less unnecessarily mysterious, and Coyote was less of a troll (not literally, I mean the kind of person who likes to screw with other people) and more lovably playful. And it was fun seeing this author’s version of Dracula and the Dracula story. However, I do like vampires, so that was a plus. So I wouldn’t say it was too dark overall, and I like when books can balance both humor and intensity.įor another thing, the story was more focused, interesting, and entertaining, and I’m not just saying that because it involved vampires. Then it wrapped up with mostly good feelings again. It also got pretty intense and dark right near the end. Possibly funnier than the first, but I admittedly don’t remember exactly how funny the first one was. I ended up enjoying this book even more than the first!įor one thing, it was funny.

I Hear They Burn for Murder by J.L. Aarne