ARC REVIEW City of Light by Keri Arthur

First in the new series by Keri Arthur, City of Light, it gave me that same feeling I had when I first picked up a Kate Daniels book; the feeling of daaammmnnn this is gonna be good. I am very happy with this book. I am very picky when it comes to first person urban fantasy, especially when the series revolves around one person, after a while the series gets repetitive. So I generally like series that focus on new people every book. There are few I make exception for, this is going to be one of them. Okay now for the reasons I liked this... tortured strong heroine with a hubris of saving children and can talk to ghosts, sexy angry alpha cat shifter who as much as he doesn't want to feels strongly protective toward the heroine, vampires that are more like zombies and wild animals put together, mysterious killer magical entities with an agenda of their own. And not to leave out the awesome writing style of Keri Arthur who ended the book with a conclusion but just enough to have you begging for more.

The story starts a hundred years after the end of the race wars. A war started by the shifters and one that the shifters ended by dropping bombs. The bombs unfortunately were strong enough to rip a holes to another place a magical place where ethereal beings can cross over and kill. This is what stopped the war the shifters and humans finally had to set aside their problems and protect each other from the vampires who come out at night and the wraiths who are the only ones who can cross the rifts and kill whoever they pass, or are they?

Tiger is the only left of her kind, she is a genetically engineered dechet; a humanoid crossed with shifter and vampire DNA created to defeat the shifters. She lives alone in the underground bunker where she lived and where she should have died. Her only companions are her little ones, the ghosts of the children who did die the day the shifters gassed the bunker. Tig's life is about to be turned upside down. Finding a child and a half dead shifter in the outskirts of town at dusk wasn't her idea of fun, she would have left the shifter if it had not been for the little girl's insistence. In doing so she sets off a series of events she can't stop she can only plow forward and hope she survives. The little girl, Penny, is a survivor of a wraith attack, it killed bother her parents leaving only her and her Uncle Jonas. Penny however was taken by the wraiths and changes somehow when Jonas finally found and saved her. Penny isn't the first she is only one of twelve children taken by the wraiths. An earth witch, Nuri has told Tig that she is the only one who can save these children. But Tig is a dechet, the most hated species to shifters and Tig has a hard time trusting this band of mercenary shifters. But agreeing to help because it's children, and she vowed never to let any more children die if she can help it. The only shifter half willing to help her is Jonas, but his hatred of her kind keeps her quiet about who and what she really is. Which only confuses her more because in all her years she has never felt this way about a shifter before. But things only get worse when she discovers she is not the only dechet still alive and that her old friend and lover may have a hand in the disappearance of the children.

Overall, I loved this book, action packed, emotional turmoil, sex. I can't wait for more.