Title: The Lost Series: Celestial Blues #2
Author: Vicki Pettersson
Published: March 19, 2013
Genre(s): Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 368
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Griffin Shaw and his wife were both murdered fifty years ago. Now a minor angel, Grif's been granted permission to solve the mystery of his own death... if he helps the Pure angels guide those souls who might otherwise be Lost.
Souls like Jeap Yang, a drug addict in his final moments of life. Grif knows that death is coming, but he cannot intervene. However, Grif's mortal lover, reporter Katherine "Kit" Craig, isn't constrained by angelic protocol. If she can stop a death, she will.
But as Kit is about to find out, there are things more traumatic and evil than murder. A strange new drug is literally eating tweakers' flesh from their bones, and Kit's crusade to get it off the streets is set to propel her and Grif into a battle with a vicious drug cartel. They'll have to scramble to stay alive, stay together, and choose their own fate... before it's chosen for them.
It’s always nice when a series is consistent from installment to installment, which I have found to be the case with the Celestial Blues trilogy. Though it’s certainly not the same as the first, I found The Lost to be a strongly written, fast-paced urban fantasy novel that focused on the darker side of city life.
While the previous book dealt with sex trafficking, The Lost’s mystery is focused on the distrubution of deomorphine (street name “krokodil”), which is affecting the poor teenagers of Las Vegas. Reporter Kit and her angel boyfriend Griff are after whoever is dealing this drug, and their investigation leads them to Little Havana as well as the top tiers of Russian gangster.
One improvement I definitely liked was that, to me, it felt like the romantic drama between Kit and Griff was toned down a bit. Which I’m not sure was actually the truth. But in any case, I felt the drug-related mystery came more to the fore for me, which I appreciated. I’m not reading this series for relationship woes, after all.
Like The Taken, this book dealt with some fairly dark subject matter. I think it might have been toned down in The Lost, though, or perhaps I’m not as sensitive to drugs as I am to sex trafficking. In either case, I found the subject matter of the book to be slightly easier to stomach, though not worse in quality or presentation. I do really like how Vicki Pettersson deals with human problems in this series, in spite of the presence of angels.
Altogether, this was a worthy second book to the trilogy. I thought The Lost was well-written and engaging, with just enough fantasy elements to keep my interest, but not so much that a gritty urban-based mystery couldn’t be prominent. I’m interested to see what goes down in the final installment.
