Author: Adam Christopher
Genre: Urban Fantasy
To Be Published: January 28th 2014
Publisher: Angry Robot
Source: ARC via Netgalley
Find: Goodreads
When Ted Hall's birthday dinner in San Francisco's famous Chinatown ends with an explosion, the fire department blames a gas leak, but when Ted finds strange, personalised messages from the restaurant's fortune cookies scattered around his apartment, his suspicions are aroused, particularly as his somnambulant travels appear to coincide with murders by the notorious Hang Wire Killer.
Meanwhile, the circus has come to town, but the Celtic dancers are taking their pagan act a little too seriously and the manager of the Olde Worlde Funfair has started talking to his vintage machines. And while the new acrobat is wowing the crowds, his frequent absences are causing tension among the performers.
Out in the city there are other new arrivals, immortals searching for an ancient power which has been unleashed, awakening something awful buried deep beneath the San Andreas fault... a primal evil which, if not stopped, will destroy the entire world.
The city of San Francisco doesn't know it yet but they're on the verge of total annihilation, and it all starts with an exploding fortune cookie during the birthday of a Bay Area blogger named Ted. It actually almost happened several times before (see: 1906 earthquake), but now with the circus in town, a few gods from long forgotten mythology in the mix, and a serial killer known as the Hang Wire Killer running loose around the city, things are looking a lot more serious.
There's certainly a lot packed into this book with a little bit of everything for everyone, and yet I didn't really like it as much as I thought it would. I was really hooked by the beginning as it (quite literally) started off with a bang, but the plot quickly became convoluted and I slowly started to lose interest.
The use of multiple perspectives was probably the best way to thoroughly explain most of the plot, but it's not one of my favorite things as a reader, especially when it includes one-time chapters of people who aren't the main focus or aren't necessarily important. One particular chapter changed points of views several times without warning which made for an annoying and confusing read.
