Paint it Black (Black Knight Chronicles, #4).
By John G. Hartness.
My rating ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.
Goblins and Witches and Trolls . . . oh crap!
In the fourth installment of The Black Knight Chronicles, Jimmy Black is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and a darned fine pity party, serving the finest alcohol, when a call from his not-quite-girlfriend-cop forces him to sober up and stare at jawbones.
“Cold case” takes on a whole new meaning when vampire detectives risk life and limbs (literally) to connect a series of decades-old kidnappings in Charlotte with current missing persons cases. All clues lead through the veil of Faerieland to the legendary Goblin’s Market, a magical bazaar where anything is available–for a price.
The boys can barely stay out of trouble in Charlotte. As fresh meat at The Market, they’ll be lucky to survive the day.
I quite enjoyed this instalment in the Black Knight Chronicles series.
Another round of Jimmy and his friend fumbling their way through a supernatural mystery. I do like that there is a tiny little bit less fumbling now as Jimmy is becoming a little bit more mature. The development of his supernatural powers and his understanding of his capabilities is still really, really slow though.
What starts of as a seemingly ordinary case of human remains with some foul play attached to them quickly develops into another dive into the supernatural world. This time to the Goblin’s Market which is about as fun and dangerous as one can expect.
Of course Jimmy meets a bunch of new creatures, some friendly (although here friendly just means they have no immediate plans to eat you) and some not so friendly. Unfortunately the author must have been smoking some mushrooms or something when he wrote part of the book. What the f… kind of name is Martifluousyntherianthemum Gregorovichinglingaringdingdingdong for instance? Maybe he thought it was funny but I think it is just silly.
Anyway, Jimmy and Co manages to navigate the perils of the market either by hiding or by applying a healthy dose of violence. Of course they get beaten up a fair amount as well. Turns out Goblins as well as a few other supernatural creatures are quite nasty. Especially their idea of a well balanced diet. There is an insanely disturbed human in the mix as well. But when all else fails, well, let’s just say that having a faeire queen and a dragon in one’s quick dial list can be a life saver… literally.
We get to know some more about this highly underused sword of Jimmy as well. When I first read I wasn’t to sure about this twist. I felt it was a bit over the top but in the end I settled for thinking it was somewhat cool after all. Especially how it was revealed. I just hope the author will go somewhere good with this though. After all, with Jimmy mostly fumbling around it is a bit like watching a kid play with nukes.
I do hope that Jimmy gets a grip and starts to grow power-wise though. The author have splattered the phrase “faster than a vampire fast” or something similar all over these books. For crying out loud, right know everything except possibly the mailman is faster than Jimmy-vampire-fast.
Still, to me, this was a fun read. I like Jimmy & Co even though it is a lot of fumbling around and I quite like the dialogue, the action, even if Jimmy gets beat up a lot and the story is not too shabby so I guess I’ll stick to this series for a while longer.
PG's Ramblings 