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Reviewed: Oct 10, 2008

The Shadows by L.A. Banks
St. Martins Press , September 2008
368 Pages, Paperback, $14.95
ISBN: 0312368755
Genre: Horror

RAW Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

With rapt anticipation, I've read the Huntress series much like I watched the Chapter pictures back in the day, always a battle of good versus evil.  And after eleven books I am still anxious.  Banks keeps bringing the drama, keeping the series informative, pulsating and irradiating.   Regardless of the many victories, readers have learned  evil is ever present.  Can you imagine no more attempts to overthrow good?  Admittedly, there are times when the team seems to fallback, and I've wanted to collar them and ask 'aren't you there yet'?  But, life is a recurrence of actions and reactions, some good, some not, so I ask why not so with the Neteru team?

- These are strange times, Carlos and Damali are more vulnerable and, at times, their humanness overshadows their specialness.  They share a secret that could reshape the team, in fact several in-house issues have them all a little tense.  And while the team should be tight, they are wigging-out. 

-Much is going on in the seventh realm.  Lilith is trying to nurse the chrysalis back to health; Councilmen have been severely wounded; Lucifer is in a rage, and there are no dark warriors.

-The Unnamed One is blackmailing the Catholic Church to endorse the Antichrist as a unifying world leader, or face the pontiff’s assassination.
-Count Dracula has been resurrected and elevated to a day-walking Councilman.

-Fallon Nuit has Bad Blood Records label back in operation and has assaulted the human spirit with shadow elementals and demon principalities; he has put phantom realms in the airways.  If the fifth biblical seal is broken, His Darkness will release the 'pale horse', and mankind will be susceptible to every plague. The dark side must bring the Neterus out of hiding.  

The Huntress series still hinges on profound religious mysteries and conversely, obsessive carnal lusts, but the center of gravity is the advent of The Apocalypse.  This time the battle lines have all been erased, nowhere is sacred.  Devastation will befall both sides and Carlos will be the cogent. 

Banks has consistently gone to her creative blood bank to bring a series that offers celestial hierarchy, world myth, the realms of hell, vampire lore, human morality and a hip street philosophy. THE SHADOWS is no different; the fight is not over, and the team needs new strategies.  The portal is open and we take a roller-coaster ride to hell and back.  Readers will be suspended as the battle becomes epic.  After eleven books the series is still ingenious, inventive, unrelenting, multi-dimensional, AND much more than a tale of vampirism.  In this eleventh outing, Banks cleverly sets the stage for the future.

Reviewed by aNN Brown, RAWSISTAZ.com
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aNN is a Computer Systems Analyst who resides in Newport News, VA. She is an avid and eclectic reader and enjoys sharing her views on authors and books.

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