The beginning of the end. I was fascinated with the whole human servant thing. I was fascinated with the werewolf added into the fray thing - talk about a messy love life! I thought that her powers increasing was fine - they had to if she was hanging around the kinds of monsters that were in her coterie. The twist with her being able to have a vampire servant bound to her was a nice one....after all, her power is to control the dead, and what are vampires but dead?

But it was never enough. It got to the point that every man who crossed her path fell madly in love, lust or slack jawed admiration of her whether he was human, vampire, werewolf, psychopath, you name it. She was a walking Love Potion Number 9. The only men who could withstand her powers of attraction were men who were such small side characters that they didn't matter.

And her powers just kept getting bigger. First she's an animator and can raise the dead...with some effort and a careful ritual and specific tools. Then she doesn't need much effort, then she doesn't need any tools at all, then she becomes a necromancer, able to call ALL the dead. Then she becomes the werewolf's female leader, then the were leopards female leader although she's not forced to do any changing with the full moon nastiness. It gets to the point that you figure when she meets God, she'll just absorb all his powers, too. Is there any power she DOESN'T have? Because if not, I can guarantee she'll have it eventually, although I will not still be reading this series by the time she ascends to divinity.

And as the sex increases, the plot decreases. I have nothing against soft core porn, I really don't. I read my fair share of it and enjoy it. But if I pick up a book to read a mystery or some fantasy and get doused with a couple hundred pages of fellatio before the plot even begins, I'm not reading what I picked the book up to read.

This book marks a major turning point in the series for me. Up until this book, the series was still a good one despite the loss of the female detective angle as her social life becomes the focus of the plots rather than solving a mystery. But this book crosses over the line and from here, you need to grit your teeth to keep going with the rest of the series.