Opinions of a Wolf

Summary:
Seattle’s succubus, Georgina Kincaid, has a lot on her hands between dating her human author boyfriend, Seth, (and not sleeping with him to protect his life energy), adjusting to her new managerial position at the bookstore, and her usual succubus requirement of stealing good men’s life energy by sleeping with them.  So the last thing she needs is another new assignment from hell, but that’s what she’s getting.  Seattle is getting a second succubus, a newbie she has to mentor.  When she starts having dreams about having a normal, human life and waking up with her energy drained, it all turns into almost too much for one succubus to handle.

Review:
I don’t tend to expect urban fantasy series to improve as they go on, but I do hope they’ll at least maintain the quality I got in the first few books.  Color me surprised then when I tackled the third book in the Georgina Kincaid series and discovered it actually got better.  It got amazing in fact.

The premise of this series is already unique in urban fantasy.  Our heroine is one of the “bad guys.”  It of course is deeper than that.  Mead presents the battle of good versus evil as far fuzzier and gray than many urban fantasy series do.  I really enjoy those gray areas, and the moments where it’s easy to see and understand various viewpoints and sides.  Because Georgina is a richly developed character and a conflicted succubus, she grows and changes over the course of the books, but her growth is not oversimplified to some direct trajectory out of being a succubus.  If anything as Georgina comes to slowly, painfully understand the world around her and her own strengths and shortcomings, things become more convoluted and difficult for the reader to predict.  This plot complexity in addition to getting the bad guy’s perspective is a large part of what keeps me coming back to the series, and it just is even better in this book.  We learn more about what makes Georgina tick and see more glimpses of her past.  It’s truly engaging.

Of course the other part that makes this series so addictive and readable is the super-hot and frequent sex scenes.  Georgina is a succubus after all, and a girl’s gotta eat.  Every scene manages to be erotic without being over-the-top, and they never become repetitive or boring.  Some of them are simply sensual without any “official” sex happening.  (Georgina has to give the man an orgasm for it to count).  In this book alone we cover a performance at an exhibitionist club, a sensual foot massage, lap dances, bent over a desk as a school girl, and a standing session in a ritzy apartment in front of large windows (and I’m probably missing a couple that stood out to me less).  And every single one of those has something going for it.  In addition to the scenes there’s the added factor that, since Georgina is a succubus, she can shapeshift.  Let’s just say, Mead uses this to the fullest of its potential.

The part of the plot that takes part only within this book, as opposed to the overarching series plot, is good.  It brings in new elements of the underworld (and Heaven), without failing to revisit old ideas and characters.  It is different enough from the previous plots to be engaging without being so different as to seem out of place in Georgina’s world.

This entry in the series is a hot read with an engaging plot.  I could not put it down, and I was sorely tempted to run right out and buy the next book.  Fans of the first two books will not be disappointed with the third and should continue on to it as soon as possible.

5 out of 5 stars

Source: Gift

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Previous Books in Series:
Succubus Blues (review)
Succubus On Top (review)

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