Review: Silver-Tongued Devil by Jaye Wells

Silver-Tongued Devil is the fourth volume in Jaye Wells’ Sabina Kane series. It was published January 5, 2012 by Orbit Books.

The Blurb

Now that the threat of war has passed, Sabina Kane is ready to focus on the future. Her relationship with Adam Lazarus is getting stronger and she’s helping her sister, Maisie, overcome the trauma of her captivity in New Orleans. Even Giguhl is managing to stay out of trouble thanks to the arrival of Pussy Willow and his new roller derby team. But as much as Sabina wants to feel hopeful about the future, part of her doesn’t trust that peace is possible. 

Her suspicions are confirmed when a string of sadistic murders threaten to stall treaty negotiations between the mages and the vampires. Sabina pitches in to find the killer, but her investigation soon leads her down dark paths that have her questioning everyone she thought she could trust. And the closer she gets to the killer, the more Sabina begins to suspect this is one foe she may not be able to kill. [GoodReads]

The Review

The first 90% of this book was soap-opera drama that didn’t move the story forward much at all. If you’ve read the earlier books in the series, you already know that Sabina set herself up for failure in her relationship from the beginning and in this book it finally came home to roost. With no clear enemy this time, Sabina is instead pitted against the new head vampire’s right-hand girl – a girl who has essentially taken Sabina’s original place. That leads to a bunch of posturing and threats and not a lot else.

The real goal is to find the person – vamp, mage or other – who is driving a wedge with grisly murder through the fragile peace Sabina created. Instead, Sabina bungles the investigation, spending time dealing with the relationship issues of herself and her friends, and letting those distract her even from watching out for her sister’s mental health.

As I said in my last review, I’ve been waiting for a reason to drop this series off my shelf. I’m not really sure what it is about Sabina that irritates me so, but it’s there nonetheless. Unfortunately for my book shelf, the last 10% of this book pulled off a complete turn around and a sucker punch that was way better and less predictable than that crappy movie of the same name.

As much as I would like to strangle Sabina and re-enact the very first scene of the series myself in some deep, dark wood, I’m still invested in how all this is going to turn out. I can’t give you a better endorsement then, “this series keeps me reading even against my will.”