Abandoned by Booklikes

Please note that I received this via NetGalley. This did not affect my reviews or rating. 

So this was pretty cool. Instead of following Peter or Nightingale (why???) we follow another magic practitioner named Tobias Winter. Tobias is the equivalent to our Peter Grant in England, only Tobias operates in Germany. Tobias is working on a case that seems to involve wine, ghosts, and magic. 

Tobias's family seemed very interesting and I wanted to know more about his dad, mother, and the family's history with policing. I did love the introduction of Vanessa and how she finds out about magic being real and that Tobias can do it. We even have a goddess in this one (seriously this series is lousy with goddesses, everyone is one it seems). 

I liked the narration though Tobias at times can sound a bit like Peter in my opinion.

"There are bad things in the world, and most of them aren't my job. But, of the things that are my responsibility, revenants are the worse. 

 

"Momentum is critical when dealing with practitioners. Magic takes concentration, even for malevolent  spirits of the dead. For a successful capture you have to pile the pressure on, and never them them catch their balance."

 

The flow was not that great though which is the main reason why I gave this four stars. The book stops and starts throughout. Usually in a Peter Grant story his voice is so forceful through the whole thing I don't notice the laggy bits as much. Or I probably do and it doesn't bother me as much. 

The book setting changing to Germany was a good idea. I honestly don't know much about German forklore/magic/spirits/etc. so it was pretty cool that this book revolved around that. I honestly didn't get a few words that were used though and felt a little bit confused here and there. Not often, but a little. There is also some discussion of the Nazis and Hitler and Hitler not being a revenant. 

I really got a kick out of the ending with Tobias and Vanessa finding out about the fact that there were more magic users out there in places like London (Peter and Nightingale), the French reopened something called The Academy, and now we know of Germany and the Abteilung KDA - the Department for Complex and Unspecific Matters.