Review: 7. Chaos Bites by Lori Handeland...

I picked up Lori Handeland's Phoenix Chronicles primarily because it was set in Milwaukee, WI, and I liked it enough to keep on reading--how do you turn down the titles?

Title: Chaos Bites (Phoenix Chronicles #4)
Author: Lori Handeland
ISBN-13: 9780312366032
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010
Purchase at IndieBound, Amazon, The Book Depository
Source: Waukesha Public Library

drey's thoughts:
It's been over a week since I read Chaos Bites, so I hope I haven't forgotten anything! Sawyer is dead and haunting her dreams, Liz is feeling guilty and despondent (not to mention sleep-deprived), and then a baby appears on her doorstep. Like, literally. To cap it off, Ruthie shows up to tell her to take the baby to Jimmy. Yeah, Liz really wants to go hang out with her ex-boyfriend...

So off she goes with baby and Luther, only to wind up chasing down a skinwalker, fighting with a Haitian sorceror who's keeping an eye on a very important spellbook, and getting herself tied up in more knots that you'd find on an old schooner (not that I know the answer, it just sounded good!)... And then the baby is kidnapped, and Jimmy goes missing. What else can go wrong? Better not ask!

Character: Liz is not my typical heroine. She's sassy, but only to people (& I use the term liberally) she doesn't like. She uses her powers when she thinks she has to, which is turning out to be more often than her friends think she should. And she gets into trouble more easily than she should, because she's not quite trained enough to know all the ins and outs of being leader of the forces of good. I'm not even quite sure that I really like her, but she kinda grows on you...

Pace & Plot: Chaos Bites feels like one of those amusement park rides that goes up and down, then up again, then down again... It starts down, as Liz is mourning Sawyer, then the pace picks up when she can't figure out what to do with a baby, then down again when she has to interact with Jimmy and Summer. And etc. But throughout the book, the pace is constant--constant chaos, constant dreaming, constant trying-to-figure-out-how-to-beat-the-bad-guys. Without picking up more demons or getting more people killed, of course..

drey's rating: 3/5 Good: Lotsa things happen, and things get way more complicated for Liz. Hope she can sort 'em out in the next book...

Have you read Lori Handeland's Phoenix Chronicles yet? What do you think of Chaos Bites?