Review – Dark Heir (Jane Yellowrock, Book 9) by Faith Hunter (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Size: 384 pages
Publisher: Roc
Release Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0451465962
Stand Alone or Series: 9th book in the Jane Yellowrock series
Source: eGalley through NetGalley.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

This was the ninth book in the Jane Yellowrock series by Hunter. I got a copy of this book through NetGalley to review. It was an excellent continuation of the series, however it was not my favorite book in the series. For some reason I had a bit of trouble getting through this one, I felt like pacing was a bit slow at points.

Leo’s deepest secret, The Son of Darkness, has escaped. Right off the bat the Son of Darkness kills 52 humans and now the city of New Orleans is in a panic. It is up to Jane and her team to hunt this baddie down and eliminate him.

This was an excellent and action packed urban fantasy. For the most part I really enjoyed it.

Jane continues to grow a lot as a character as do Eli and the Kid. Jane is working on harnessing her power stop time. In fact magic is more prevalent than ever in this book. While the magic and time-bending make things interesting, there are points where I really miss the old stake-slinging Jane who hunted vampires down through determination and will.

Beast isn’t in this novel a ton and I really missed her. I know her and Jane are starting to merge abilities…but Jane loses the ability to shift throughout most of this book which makes Beast very scarce. I also was a bit frustrated by how Jane kept beating herself up over everything. I understand that she continues to struggle with light versus dark; but she doesn’t need to be so…well…whiny…about it.

Additionally George isn’t in the book much and I missed him. He is in the story some, but he is much more in the background than in previous books. Jane and him do continue to have a relationship but it is still pretty new and that doesn’t change much in this book.

I was happy to see that Rick finally seems to be out of the story (hated him). I also continued to enjoy Jane’s working relationship with the two Younger brothers.

Overall I ended up enjoying this book a lot. This has been a long-running urban fantasy series that still feels fresh and interesting. I continue to enjoy the characters and the plot. This wasn’t my favorite book of the series ( I missed Beast and Bruiser and got sick of Jane constantly beating herself up), but it was still a good read. This is one of the better urban fantasy series out there, so I would definitely recommend it to urban fantasy fans.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge