REVIEWED by Jay V.

TITLE: A Gilded Iron Blade

AUTHOR: Kai Butler

SERIES: San Amaro Investigations #3

PUBLISHER: Self Published

LENGTH: 465 pages

RELEASE DATE: February 7, 2022

BLURB:

Saving the city was supposed to be the hard part…

Parker Ferro can’t catch a break. After saving San Amaro from destruction for the second time and reconciling with his boyfriend, his current plans are to relax on his couch until his ears stop ringing.

Unfortunately, the thousand realms he just saved have a way of yanking him back into service and the dead have come back to haunt him. When he’s called in by the SAPD to consult on the murder of an anti-paranormals protestor killed with fae magic, Parker is caught up in an intricate political web that was spun long before he was ever born.

Now Parker has to unravel the mystery behind the murder and untangle old family secrets before irreversible damage is done to his new friends and alliances. At least this time, he’ll hopefully have some help…

REVIEW:

Parker just wants to sleep.  Saving the world is hard and he just wants to rest his eyes. A mysterious murder that defies logic pulls him out of his rest.

He’s trying to settle in to be the Windrose, but it’s not an easy task. And the four fae kingdoms seem to be in a holding pattern, at least not stirring up too much trouble. But that’s fine, since there’s something much more sinister going on. And much to his protest, Parker must also learn how to wield the Iron Sword gifted to him by the Winter King. But he keeps hearing voices that push him to do violence. Can he tame these feelings?

Butler’s last book was pretty epic in putting the stakes really high for Parker & Nick, but more on a world scale. Now the stakes are more personal, or at least have more personal affects on them. Parker is still recovering from his epic world save, but there’s more than just being tired, he’s brought on fire to his magic and it’s slowing burning him from the inside out. Trying to balance his magical life and his investigative life are a fine balance and they do tend to cross each other.

As always, family is involved and we get better depth those relationships. I’ve really liked Parker but we don’t get as much of a sense of him being the down & out PI like before. He’s still trying to crack cases, but somehow it’s more ‘professional.’  We get mild background snippets of his childhood but this is more a forward looking story – focusing on the cases going around.

Books in the middle of a series are sometimes more transitional, but this one has a good arc and progression.  The stakes are always high but it’s a joy to visit Butler’s world with some interesting tidbits lead to hinting of what is to come. The story wraps up nicely for this book, but there’s always something going on in San Amaro. As always, I look forward to more of the life of Park and Nick.

RATING:  

BUY LINK: 

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