Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Flax’s Pursuit
SERIES: AURA #2
AUTHOR: Bellora Quinn and Angel Martinez
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound
LENGTH: 98,263 words
BLURB:
A murderer haunts the city, turning the unwary to stone. Between hunting this evil and corralling new arrivals, Flax struggles to guard both his life and his heart.
Quinn and Valerian have come through the trials of facing an undead lich queen and the perils of falling in love. Now they work to restore AURA to its previous strength and efficiency while navigating their new life with each other. Fortunately, they’re not in this alone.
Kai Hiltas has taken over as the head of the research department at AURA and has become everyone’s favourite workaholic, everyone except his lover Tenzin, who has had enough of his late nights and broken promises. As Kai tries to salvage his relationship, he finds a teacher for Quinn, who also happens to be one of Valerian’s new officers, Flax Wolfheart, a sexy elf with trouble written all over him.
Flax has motives beyond simply teaching Quinn to control his magic. He’s trying to recover from his own losses and failures, but he has a plan. The two newest elvish crossovers, Ash and Sage, are sizzling hot and might even like him. With them as backup as he tracks a deadly stone mage and figures out how to teach Quinn, Flax sees his chance to impress Val and snag a place by his captain’s side. On the hunt for both danger and redemption, Flax’s pursuit leads him ultimately down trails he never expected.
REVIEW:
Wow. There is so much awesomeness in this book I don’t even now where to start! Let me think about this…
This is urban fantasy at it’s finest. The story takes place in our world, but it’s our world turned on its head. A badly done magical event has caused rifts to periodically form in the boundary between our world and other realms. This causes magical beings to fall out of their world and in to ours. A government-funded group has been established to manage the assimilation of the beings that appear. This group is called AURA, the Agency of Unnatural Resettlement and Assimilation, and is mainly staffed by refugees. Elves, griffins, sirens, centaurs and such. We learned all of this is Quinn’s Gambit, the first book in this series.
We also met Quinn, a magic wielding human, and Valerian, his elf lover, who both work for AURA. Their story is full of excellent drama, and at the end of the first book they are happily living together. Part of this book focuses on Val and Quinn, as they work through the potential to add other elves to their relationship. The potential mates are Flax, an elf that works for Val and has had the hots for him for some time. The others are Sage and Ash, two very recent arrivals to this strange new world. Flax, Sage, and Ash, have some drama and issues to deal with between the three of them, complicating it is the idea to court Val and Quinn and see about a bond with them.
The non-relationship plot follows the AURA folks as they are searching for a murderer, who has been turning people in to stone. Flax and Quinn play a big part in this storyline, Val poking about a bit, and Sage and Ash are involved on the side. Also Kai, the head of the magic department, and his assistants, including the most excellent character ever, VICKI! We follow the AURA folks as they look for the bad guy. Creepy! But I loved how it was done, we see not only the good guys hunting the bad guy, but his side of things as well. I loved how they all worked together to solve this mystery, everyone contributing their bit of talent to the mix.
There is also some drama between Kai and his lover Tenzin, a freaking yeti! Kai is kind of an asshole, and works too much, leaving his big beautiful yeti alone. We see their relationship go down, then go back up. I love Kai and his darkness, his dedication, and his big heart. I wish we had seen a bit more of Tenzin, I think he’s a fantastic character, I’ve never read a book with a yeti in it before. Well, he was in the first book, so technically this is my SECOND yeti book!
So I LOVED this book! I loved the first one, I loved this one, and I hope we’ll see more so I can love them as well! I loved that we see so much of Val and Quinn in this book, it’s as much their book as it is Flax’s. I loved the mystery that provides the background to this book, it kept me interested the whole time. I love Kai and his drama, and loved how that resolved. I loved Flax, Sage, and Ash. Their story was quite good, and the three-way sex between them was hot and very lovely. I loved the drama between Val and Quinn, and Flax, Ash, and Sage, the whole potential relationship thing was very cool. And I loved how it all worked out.
This is a nice long book, as the first one was, so there is lots of time for world building. There is background, rules, unique characters, and time for relationships to develop. It’s all smooth and calm, then moments of intensity, drama both good and bad. There’s a bit of humor, sweetness and darkness, and some seriously amazing sexy times. The writing was great, great characters, a creative story, quick dialogue, and damn fine sex.
I don’t know what else to say! I loved it! If you read the first book, you’ll love this one. If you didn’t read it, you could read this one on its own, but I wouldn’t. I’d go get Quinn’s Gambit and read it first, then follow it up with Flax’s Pursuit. If you have not read any urban fantasy, this would be a great series to start with.
If we don’t get Yeti sex in the next book I’m going to hunt you down Angel!
Here is my review of Quinn’s Gambit, the first is this awesome series!
RATING: 
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