King of the Dead

Well, I did it!  I actually read the second book in Joseph Nassise's Jeremiah Hunt trilogy, King of the Dead!

King of the Dead picks up a few months after Eyes to See.  Jeremiah, Denise Clearwater, and Dmitri have been lying low now that Jeremiah is on the FBI's most wanted list, being framed as the serial killer known as the Reaper, plus blamed for the death of Detective Stanton (even though he is innocent of that, too).  But as time goes on, Denise starts getting visions about the apocalypse happening in New Orleans that she has to be there for according to Gaia.  So despite Hunt's trepidation, the three of them make the journey.  The arrive to find the city's magical community in shambles.  Denise's old friend and ex-coven mate, Simon Gallagher, is the new Lord Marshall because everyone else is either dead or in a coma.  Some sort of plague is targeting the magical community, and as much as Hunt would rather be ANYWHERE else, because Denise refuses to leave, he remains to help her figure it out.

King of the Dead was an interesting read.  I liked how the FBI agent tracking Hunt got his own chapters (I actually found myself wishing there were more!) It was also neat to see how the magical community worked (or at least functioned since many of its leaders were out of the picture).  I also really liked the mystery of the disease and how Hunt's ghostvision ended up key to helping everyone figure it out.

But I didn't really like the end of the book.  There was what I'm going to call a "final showdown" in New Orleans where the book felt like it was going to wrap up.  But then the story kept going for another fifty pages.  And those last fifty pages felt rushed.  This may have been on purpose, as Hunt himself then had a tight time frame, but it just didn't feel very satisfying at all (especially since there was only one chapter from Denise's perspective, where maybe a second one could have taken the time to flesh out what was happening a bit more - although again, this was probably deliberate that there wasn't a second Denise chapter so the reader could be more shocked by what happened when Hunt found her).  The very end is also rather abrupt so, I suspect, the story can continue in book 3 right where this leaves off.  This is all really unfortunate, as up until this rushed and kind of unsatisfying ending, I was really enjoying the book.

With that being said though, I'm still interested to see where Watcher of the Dark takes us....