If you like fantasies and soap operas, this will be your thing. But don’t pick it up if you’re looking for comedy.
A cop, a professor, a bodyguard, an actor, a shopkeeper, and a princess all live in New York. A witch, a mage, a werewolf, a vampire, a half-demon, and a humanoid dragon also all live in New York. They happen to be the same people. They live on a version of Earth that “angels” invaded, dragging along refugees from other worlds, and because the “angels” broke the rules and procreated with humans, the “angels” are now able to ward off the pursuing “demons,” who can only come to Earth when specifically summoned, and only show up for as long as it takes to do a little procreation of their own.
There is no hint of Nephilim in this book.
The cop-witch wants to be an elite cop, has tried out and been turned down multiple times, and decides that she needs to bond an ultra-powerful familiar to impress the interviewers, but instead accidentally bonds a pigeon, which she proceeds to mistreat because somehow it’s wrong to be prejudiced against half-demons for what they are, but perfectly acceptable to be prejudiced against “rats of the sky.” The professor-mage wants to teach at a university, rather than research at a spell laboratory, and has the full support of his boss and various friends to do so, but events keep getting in the way. The werewolf-bodyguard is desperately trying to get accepted into the local pack because his parents got their family kicked out of his birth pack when he was an infant, and he spends the whole book fighting the temptation to do the wrong things that would get him accepted. The vampire-actor refuses to play villain parts, so he is perpetually cash-strapped and susceptible to lust. The half-demon-shopkeeper is desperately trying to be perfectly good, to avoid “descending,” and is both constantly being pushed into a corner and somehow unaware that even thoughts and intents should have gotten her her first mark long before it happened. The humanoid dragon-princess is on the verge of being politically married off, but manages to be her own rescuer, yet… never escapes much farther that the other side of the moat, only takes the most minimal steps toward her own independence, and finally acts with profound stupidity on a plan that didn’t work the first time she tried it. Oh, and all living parental figures in the book are self-absorbed and emotionally abusive.
On the positive side, there is a lot going on, so the book never gets boring. On the negative side, it never firms into a cohesive story mass. On the positive side, seeing some of the characters at work was really interesting and helped to build the world out a bit— if the author increased that element in the second book, it might be a good deal better!
The audiobook voice-acting is fairly high-quality, and it helps to differentiate some of the characters who otherwise risk blurring together a little. If you like fantasy and soaps, give this book a try. Just don’t go in expecting to laugh.