Noticed a few instances of words repeated within short distance of each other. Strode. Odin did a lot of that and it sticks out when it's within a stride of each other. Not the end of the world, but usually it's avoidable.
clunky usage of Not in a sentence. Found it in the second half of the book, no I can't remember where, I was in bed. But when I saw it, it stopped me to puzzle what he meant and realize the not was put too far forward in the sentence.
What about Rudy? Completely forgot about him after the big scene. Murphy being dead comes to mind plenty, but he can't muster a thought, even tamped down about "did they find Rudy". There is no such thing as truly putting something out of mind.
Conjuritis was never explained, never cured, and pretty much disappeared by the 77% mark (kindle tells me these things).
Most of the challenges in the story were resolved in serial sequence. hunters show up, hunters defeated. vampires show up, vampires leave. Jotunn show up, jotunn defeated. It doesn't feel very complex, and very little is introduced as a problem, avoided for a time as another problem shows up and then things get resolved as with past books. The layering we do get is really in the denouement as details setup with Justine and Lara in Peace Talks come to fruitiion.
Maybe part of the problem is that this was all one book, split by the publisher into two which changed the flavor of the book.
If Butters stands up between Harry one more time, I'm gonna scream. Oh wait, he got KO'd finally. I like Butters. But each time Jim had him appear as the last defender for Harry like he forgot he'd written than a few chapters before. The last stand seems like it should have been a single bullet, used once. On the plus side, everybody thought Butters was the key to cutting through the titanic armor. Good bait and switch.
And I was right about Justine being infected by Nemesis. Just not so literally.
It wasn't terrible. Jim's got way more successes under his belt than I've got attempts. But in the five years it took him to write all this, I learned a few things and started my own book. Changes how one reads other books.
