** spoiler alert ** This is the first in what appears to be a popular series judging by the shelf in Barnes & Nobles. It’s first person point of view (since that matters to some people for some reason I don’t understand). The first chapter is a little rough, a bit too much information dump, not enough action. Once it gets rolling, the story is a pretty good urban fantasy.

The main character is Cal (short for Caliban) Leandros and one of the things that adds to the roughness of chapter one is that Cal is a bit on the whiney and lazy side (admittedly so). Cal lives poorly in NYC at the moment with his older half brother, Niko. Thanks to Cal they’ve lived life on the run for the last four years.

Their fortune-telling shyster alcoholic mother would never have won mother of the year. She didn’t care much for Niko and that was head and shoulders above what she thought of Cal. She named him Caliban after Shakespeare’s famous monster for one reason; she had slept with a demon and he was Cal’s father. He really is half a monster. Four years prior to the opening of the novel, Cal’s demonic father, creatures that Niko and Cal have taken to calling ‘Grendels,’ found them, hauling Cal off to their demonic homeland. When he reappears a few days later, two years had passed for Cal (now making him functionally two years younger than Niko rather than four) but he has no memory of it.

Now in NYC, Cal is working in a dive bar and Niko is a bodyguard, both of them ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. Their only acquaintances are Georgina, a true seer that Cal has a crush on and Rafferty, the healer out on Staten Island. It’s a rough life but it is at least a life, which is more than they’d get if Cal’s demonic relative catch up with them. So when Niko gets wind of a Grendel in Central Park, he wants to run.

Cal doesn’t. He doesn’t want to leave Georgina or Samuel, the musician who has sudden taken to playing at the dive bar. Cal also never tells his humorless brother about “Alice,” the humming in the mirror and the hint that something is in the glass. Cal is more worried about keeping the monster inside him tamed and feeling guilty that his brother has no real life other than keeping him safe. Niko is bright, winning a scholarship to college when Cal was first taken and Niko threw it all out to keep his brother alive. He wants Niko to have a real life.

Niko, having none of it, makes him go to the used car dealership with him since their vehicle doesn’t have much left to it. They run across a used car dealer that Cal can smell isn’t human. The dealer, Robin, turns out to be a mythological creature, while having crazy amounts of sexual energy and complete bisexuality, isn’t evil, isn’t a Grendel but he knows what they are.

Cal manages to stall his brother for a while, using Robin’s thousands of years of knowledge to figure out what his is, half auphe as it turns out, and why he is so important to them that they keep chasing him down. But the thing Cal didn’t tell his brother about comes back to haunt him and things go from bad to worse and the latter third of the book becomes can Niko save Cal from his demonic side.

It was pretty enjoyable. Cal does whine a lot but it’s tolerable. I liked the brothers but there is a bit of two dimensionality to them, especially Niko. It’s tricky giving the non-point-of-view characters depth when writing in first person and it takes Niko until the end to really begin to develop. All we know is that he’s martial arts guy with severe dedication to health food and keeping Cal safe. In some ways, Robin has more personality to him.

There were a couple of things that bothered me but most especially was where did Niko learn his skills? Did he start before the time Cal was taken (since it wasn’t a secret mom diddled a demon)? If not then after? His skill level doesn’t really square with the poverty of life with Mom or life on the run but okay I’ll put on my suspicion of disbelief glasses for that. I was more worried (Spoiler alert) that they stayed in NYC after what happened with Cal. Fingerprints? Video security? DNA? This isn’t set in 1985. I’d think that would be an issue for Cal for reasons that will be obvious if you read this. I was going to check for book two at the library but I went into B&N last night with my blood sugar sky high and riding the happy wave after seeing the Avengers (not a mix that will give you good decision making) and bought number two. So I guess that’s enough to recommend this to others.