My favourite plot line of the three books so far, the great rescue attempt!

At the end of the last book, after the battle had died down and they we able to count casualties, it became known that Maisie, Sabina's long lost twin sister, had been taken by Lavinia (Sabina's grandmother and ruler of the vampire race) during the fight. Now Sabina will stop at nothing to get her back and to kill Lavinia once and for all. It's way past time for granny to die!

Just thinking about the conditions her sister is being kept in is enough to send Sabina into a killing rage. Maisie, who, unlike Sabina is rather soft hearted, almost naive in nature, is just not mentally equipped to deal with the foul evilness of her vampire side of the family. So even if they manage to rescue her, they cannot be sure the Maisie they get back, will be the same girl that they lost.

Naturally these are tense times for everyone. Luckily, Sabina has sexy mage Adam Lazerous by her side. His formidable magic abilities as well as just the strength she derives from his confident, calming presence is all that's going to get her through this hunt. She also has Giguhl, aka Mr. Giggles, her demon familiar (and the star of these books if you ask me) as well as some interesting new characters: a human voodoo priestess, a drag queen who goes by the name of Pussy Willow, and a female werewolf.

It's a tough battle they face, As we know from book one, Lavinia and her followers have access to mage blood which makes them doubly hard to kill. An ancient vampire is one thing, a magic-wielding ancient vampire is so much worse. It's going to be the biggest battle yet and not everyone may come out the other side in one piece.

There was a short story available in between this book and the second book in the main series, The Mage in Black, entitled Violet tendencies. I actually didn't read this as I couldn't find a download for it here in the UK for my eReader, but it is available from Amazon Kindle (I just don't have one) or from the Sony Store in the US. I don't think it's imperative to read it, I certainly was able to follow what was happening without it. The only thing to note is that, as you'll recall in the last book, Giguhl, the lovable Mischief demon was madly in love with the female Vanity demon, Valva, and then all of a sudden in this book, she is nowhere to be found and is referred to only as as "she who must not be named". Basically, poor Giguhl has had his heart broken for the first time. Bless his little cloven hooves. Luckily for us that doesn't mean we don't get some brilliantly funny lines from him in this book as we've come to expect, and in fact, he's even able to dole out a helping of relationship advice for our Sabina, which, lets face it, she kinda needs!

There were some very sweet scenes with Adam and Sabina in this book. I even had to blink back a few tears at one point. For readers of this series this is one not to miss!