Description

Living your life on the edge is all fun and games, until the ground shifts before your feet and you wind up dead on the streets with a hole in your head.

Informant Jonathan Warner is perfectly content with living his life one exciting night at a time. But when his cop friend asks him for help regarding a dead auctioneer and a missing jewel, he finds himself suddenly dragged into the hidden world of vampires and immortals.

What do immortals want from him? Who killed the auctioneer? Why is this jewel so important? And will his life ever be the same again?

This is the tale of the Immortal Stonekeeper.

Community Reviews(1)

RznRoyal Road

★★★★★ 5.0

The supernatural elements in this story are the focus while the aspects of the Lily Noir are important in this part thriller, part supernatural drama. Avoiding the traps of a MacGuffin quest and the drama of campy supernatural stories the characters have a surprising amount of depth given the page count.
The plot takes some time to get going, as the mystery comes into play. While we are eased into Jonathan's situation, pieces on the proverbial chessboard are already being moved. The characters have unusual depth and that can make it a tad difficult to understand or take seriously, particularly Ms. Carpenter's history. Some of this awkwardness is played off with Duncan and the web of connections the immortals have in the world.
While fairly complicated, the plot builds, the mystery partially resolved, and then it goes into a good ending. The climax itself dipped into the unrealistic, straining suspension of disbelief in a book filled with a host of supernatural beings, but with a few twists and an unexpected two-part conclusion it has a solid ending. The weakest part of the book is the opening which threatens to mislead the reader on the genre and the dystopian aspect of 'credits' being thrown about - though it quickly finds its mark with Jonathan's introduction to the other immortals.
The prose is solid, with a few awkward constructions, and few things that thematically feel off. As for something being a bit 'off', that shopkeeper (Axtrrpuq) which is nigh unpronounceable dealing in protection for instead of protection of - in-universe it makes sense, but my brain got a bit tripped up and suspected he was shady. Granted the market itself sounded fairly shady in the first place.
With a few clever bits here and there, the world works and is enjoyable for those knowledgeable of supernatural 'natures', but those without such background may be a bit overwhelmed by some of it. Duncan and Lucy do a fair amount of lifting in the story and have arguably more importance than J