Havoc’s Cry, Loren Weaver
Title: Havoc’s Cry
Author: Loren Weaver
Synopsis:
The only living Sorceress, Victoria Novak, finally earned a peaceful, normal life. But with one howl on a full moon, her whole life crashes back into paranormal chaos. The FBI show up to recruit her to the Federal Paranormal Division, the very first all paranormal police force and she can’t decline. Tori must train a new team of special agents in paranormal etiquette in the middle of solving a crime that’s leaving ravaged bodies twisted into grotesque shapes. Caught in the middle of a werewolf fight for dominance, Tori can’t let personal emotion interfere with solving a crime. Until the crime becomes personal. With her life spinning into chaos, the real question is how far is she willing to go to answer Havoc’s Cry.
Review:
Havoc’s cry takes place in a world much like ours, but paranormals have come out of the wood work and are living amongst humans. The author went to great lengths to build a complex paranormal world and clearly defined a variety of types of paranormals, the kinds of powers they had, even a bit of a hierarchy amongst them based on their strength and power (though this might be hotly debated amongst the paranormals themselves!). I appreciated the level of detail and thought that went into defining the paranormals of this world.
The protagonist, Tor, had a great dry wit and sarcastic approach that I liked and found very relatable. The story was good, the primary plot being the need to solve a string of brutal murders, with the political dynamics of a werewolf tribe driving the subplot. I thought both story lines were interesting and compelling.
That said, the heavy exposition throughout the book really slowed the storyline down for me. There are large sections where the characters are all standing around getting lectured by the protagonist about paranormals which frequently became boring for me. I would have personally preferred this information be shown instead of told by using the action and unrolling of the story to reveal this information rather than lecture.
While I liked Tor, for the most part, but I found the other characters to be little more than straw-men, figures for Tor to talk to and tease with but none of whom had any real value to the story outside of being props for the protagonist. I really enjoy character driven stories and Havoc’s Cry is definitely more plot driven than character driven.
If you enjoy the paranormal, and particularly if you enjoy plot driven stories, I’d say pick up Havoc’s Cry and give it a read. If you prefer stories that are more character driven this might not be the story for you.
