Cursed City; William Massa

Title: Cursed City (Shadow Detective #1)
Author: William Massa
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Supernatural
Publisher: Critical Mass Publishing
Published Date: December 11th, 2016

My name is Mike Raven, and the weird and supernatural are my life. Monsters murdered my parents when I was eight. Turns out my folks were paranormal investigators and Hell always settles its debts. Naturally I decided to join the family business.

For two decades I've studied the occult and traveled the world hunting nightmares. Vampires. Shifters. Demons. Wraiths. I've faced them all. But my greatest challenge still lay ahead...

From the moment Celeste stepped into my office, I knew she was in trouble. Black magic trouble. Her father had promised her soul to a powerful demon on the day she was born. Now, twenty-one years later, the forces of darkness were gathering to collect their long-awaited prize.

Guess who's about to pick a fight with the Devil himself?

Rating

Hello Fellow Readers,

I read this with the full intention of wanting a book like Jim Butcher's series The Dresden Files. While yes this a bit like that series it is not a carbon copy. Mike Raven (goes by Raven in the book) is much more focused, not as perverted and absolutely not a wizard. He does have that annoying chivalrous tendency that gets him into trouble, but it isn't too annoying. The book starts out simple and straight to the action, as we see Raven currently on a case. We get snippets of his backstory as he is hunting this baddie down. Raven is extremely open with his past and what started him on this road to hunting the supernatural, which is refreshing. This is a light read so it didn't take me long to finish it.

I will say that it is extremely predictable as to what is going to happen, however while I usually find that annoying it didn't bother me so much as I wanted to see how Raven was going to handle things. I will say I wished the book was a bit longer as the story was just a little too constant and I really wanted to get to know some of the side characters a bit more so I would care about them in case anything were to happen. However, with 8 books currently in the series, I don't think it will be too much of a problem as I will be reading this series.