RELEASED: JANUARY 30, 2026
PUBLISHER: FALSTAFF BOOKS
LENGTH: 418 PAGES
GENRE: URBAN FANTASY/SUPERHERO/CRIME
What I appreciate most in venturing into Alex Bledsoe's latest novel is that it starts where the story begins, and even though the first chapter is really a prologue, it is the beginning of the timeline for the events that unfold that lead into the investigation this story centers around. I also really appreciate the real-time chaptering aspect of this read. The fact that every chapter is headlined by a timestamp for a moment in the linear timeline of the story is a clever device, because it disarms the aspects that we are following several characters and their role in this story as it unfolds. It also allows a sensible ease in following each character.
It helps that Alex has a knack for creating character arcs, and it is absolutely his superpower as a writer. I rarely lost a character arc, well, maybe more aptly put, there was only one character I craved to have of an arc for, and realized I had to be patient for that. I am not patient, so that's on me really. More on that character later in this review. I felt the way we weave in and out, but spent ample time with each character, especially a lot of the ancillary fringe characters, really lent to the experience of the story itself.
There are great moments that help justify those set-ups, namely a diner shoot-out and the 3rd act event that culminates with all the work put into setting it up. Those are very well-written moments for sure, but it's all the little vignettes before, around, and even after that that really enhance this reading experience. The subtle nuances that Alex leads us into and does hit us over the head with are carefully constructed, and moreover, they give flavor to characters that we may not even want to like but have no choice but to gravitate towards.
Along those lines, it is really the unsavories that Alex has written a tad more exceptionally here. They seem to just demand our attention. Whereas the ones doing the "good" are asking us to look away a lot and leave them to do what they do. It's a neat juxtaposition that works very well and maybe too well.
Which leads me to my only pause in this book: the involvement of the Superhero Lightning Girl. Just as I mentioned above, and how Alex writes these characters, this really, for this reader, becomes Darren Flaxstone's story. Lightning Girl is almost not necessary here. Let me clarify: Alex writes her in a manner that ultimately does matter and probably wouldn't happen without her, but there are several times when she appears, or we switch out of her story, and I think about how good this story would be anyway if she weren't there. I also felt like it took so long to get to her arc; we get her motivations on page 1, and then not again till several pages later. We get Darren about 15 -20 pages in, and we are following him almost every step of the way to the end. So like I said, he is beyond polarizing.
Darren is the Michael Corleone-esque, dapper mobster who makes Sonny Corinthos look like the Fonz in that episode in Happy Days where he loses his cool. I know I am digressing while dating myself while simultaneously adding more Google searches to some of you reading this. Don't at me, just look those references up later.
The great thing is that because all the other characters are just as fleshed out, Darren seems a lot more present but also a lot more suave and smarter, like a good consigliere and cold-blooded mobster would be. It was nice to read that on a page. It was also nice to have a chess player in this story's game who was playing beyond everyone else's capabilities. That's not to say no one else was smart, there are a couple of great moments where we see certain characters get certain revelations that play out int he real time POV's we are experiencing. It makes us as readers feel clever through osmosis, and Darren really did that here more than any other character, at least for this reader.
To be fair, Lightning Girl is kind of the Keyser Soze of this book. Wherein, because we are so entrenched in multiple POVS, there is a lot of chatter whether or not she is even real or a mythos drummed up to scare the unfavorables in the city of Ratway. So her not getting fleshed out as much makes sense, but it also distracted me a little.
Ultimately, though, Alex does right for this reader and utilizes her in a manner that does make sense. It is a plethora of choices he makes as the author that really all come together to make this story move so well. This has a wonderful 3-act structure feel to it, which, of course, is a favorite ideal of mine, and works so well for these types of stories. It is a great escape novel that I think has charm and charisma spewing off the pages. If you wanted to be entertained, you wouldn't go wrong taking this one on.
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