Firewalkers

April 15, 2018

After discovering a group of locals are just barely alive in a zombielike state in a warehouse, Recondito, CA, police officer Patrick Tevake, FBI agents Izzie Lefevre and Daphne Richardson, and Chief Medical Examiner Joyce Nguyen find a connection between the new street drug Ink and serial killings and mass murders dating back a century. They also discover that the town is considered by many to be a mystical place, where otherworldly entities, or demons, can breach their planes of existence and enter and control human minds. With the last ancestral protector of humanity gone, Patrick and Izzie must use their knowledge and skills to defeat the Otherworld. VERDICT This follow-up to iZombie cocreator Roberson's Firewalk is a gritty, action-packed urban fantasy that may leave readers unfamiliar with the first book a bit puzzled. However, they will be hooked by the intriguing town of Recondito and the relationships among its engaging characters.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 12, 2018
Roberson’s so-so second supernatural thriller teaming Izzie Lefevre, of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, with Recondito, Calif., police detective Patrick Tevake fails to deliver on the promise of 2016’s Firewalk. The pair have learned that humanity is threatened by the Ridden, “hordes of people whose minds had been destroyed while their bodies were being taken over by intelligences from another world.” Izzie carefully sanitizes her reports to her superiors to avoid appearing like a nut, but that becomes harder to do when she revisits the notorious closed case of serial killer Nicholas Fuller. She and her colleagues believed that the so-called Recondito Reaper butchered his victims postmortem “to satisfy some kind of aberrant psychological gratification.” But her discoveries about the Ridden indicate that Fuller was actually following the tradition of a secret Mayan order, the daykeepers, who dismembered the dead to prevent daimons from reanimating the bodies. The plot follows a familiar path from there as Izzie tries to pursue the truth while keeping her job. This lesser variation on the walking dead theme may disappoint zombie fans.

February 1, 2018
A quirky group comes together to snark and fight the zombie apocalypse while learning about the disturbing history of their small town.Plunging with little recap back into the world created in Firewalk (2016), Roberson presents a ragtag group of Recondito, California, citizens who've made it through another night of potential doom. Luckily, police officer Patrick Tevake, who lives in a secure part of town, can offer safe harbor to friends and colleagues from the FBI, like Daphne Richardson and Izzie Lefevre, as well as his crush, Recondito Chief Medical Examiner Joyce Nguyen. The crew has only recently become aware that some locals have entered a zombielike state that they've termed being "Ridden," and they know little more. They believe it's related somehow both to the distribution of Ink, a new street drug, and Parasol, a software company founded by eccentric self-made millionaire Martin Zotovic. It's hard to figure out how Ink and Parasol are connected when the gang can't step outside at dark without being chased by the Ridden. Though they think Patrick's neighborhood is somehow protected by symbols his uncle once painted on area walls, this theory is debunked during a night mission in which the group is attacked by the Ridden, getting away only through the discovery that silver and salt both have repellent powers. Patrick concentrates on restoring the symbols to their former glory in the hope of renewing their protective powers. New couple Izzie and Daphne focus their energy on preparing for the zombie apocalypse, fashioning protective gris-gris bags and trying out weapons designed to keep the Ridden at bay. These are just protective strategies until the group can figure out how to dispense with the Ridden for good.With a sudden climax leading to what may or may not be an ending of this specific big bad, though not of the world Roberson's created, the second in this series lacks the background and character development that made the first such a delight.

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April 1, 2018
The second installment of the Recondito saga picks up where Firewalk (2016) left off. FBI agent Izzie Lefevre and police detective Patrick Tevake know that the weird occurrences in the town of Recondito are all connected to the supernatural, including rampant overuse of the drug Ink. It turns out that Recondito is the place where creatures from other planes can be reached, and people that are taking Ink to excess are the perfect hosts for these beings. Called the Ridden, these people had previously been contained by ancestors of both Izzie and Patrick. The continuation of the fight against evil and the Ridden is an imaginative take on possession and zombie stories, with unique heroes that make the series stand out.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)