#Blog Tour/Review - Flame in the Dark by Faith Hunter #Urban #Fantasy

Welcome to Gizmo's Tour Stop for Flame in the Dark by Faith Hunter. Today, I have a short story and a tour wide giveaway to share with you. 

Series: Soulwood # 3
Format: Paperback, 352 pages
Release Date: December 5, 2017
Publisher: ACE/ROC
Source: Publisher
Genre: Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 978-0451473332
Mass Market Paperback $7.99

Nell Ingram has always known she was different. Since she was a child, she’s been able to feel and channel ancient powers from deep within the earth. When she met Jane Yellowrock, her entire life changed, and she was recruited into PsyLED—the Homeland Security division that polices paranormals. But now her newly formed unit is about to take on its toughest case yet.

A powerful senator barely survives an assassination attempt that leaves many others dead—and the house he was visiting burns to the ground. Invisible to security cameras, the assassin literally disappears, and Nell’s team is called in. As they track a killer they know is more—or less—than human, they unravel a web of dark intrigue and malevolent motives that tests them to their limits and beyond.

Flame in the Dark is the third installment in author Faith Hunter's

Soulwood series. Special Agent Nell Ingram is a probationary paranormal investigator for PsyLED. She has found a home among Unit Eighteen which includes team leader Rick LaFleur (were-leopard), T. Laine (witch), Occam (were-panther), Jojo (IT Specialist), and Tandy (empath). As the story begins, someone is targeting an influential US Senator who is pro-paranormal rights and his family. What's curious is that at every incident involving the Senator or his family, there are also incidences of fire at the scene. 

Since this is a high profile case, Nell and team are joined by Soul, an Arcencial (rainbow dragon), who is now Assistant Director of PsyLED. Soul has now been involved in both Jane Yellowrock's series as well as Nell's. She is a character that you want to avoid making angry at all costs. Between the last book, Curse on the Land, and this story, things have changed quite a bit for the team. Rick, who is now able to shift during the full moon thanks to Nell, has arrived back in Knoxville after spending time with Jane and her team. One could say that he is emotionally bereft and out on a limb and still isn't over how things ended between them.

Meanwhile, Nell is starting to fully understand her abilities. Abilities that allow her to track and use land to help solve investigations. Abilities that allow her to heal herself whenever she gets badly injured by using the land. Abilities that allow her to claim the land using her own blood. She's also physically changing. Let me repeat what I already said about Nell. Just because Nell is a former Church woman who tends to fall back on her church speak, doesn't mean that she's not learned or smart. When given the chance, she is more than capable of figuring out things without people on her team having to explain things to her repeatedly.

The author tempts readers by revealing what Jane has told Nell about what she is. It's also runs in her sister Mindy aka Mud's veins. This dynamic should be interesting going forward. This book is also filled with curious relationship dynamics. If you've Cold Reign, you know that there is trouble on the horizon which is affecting every single Mithran in the US. I mentioned this because Ming of Glass's scion Yummy does a bit of a catch up with Nell and I loved their dynamics. I loved the fact that they could temper themselves long enough to work pretty solidly together. I also loved Yummy's nickname for Nell. Nell & Occam seem to be drifting into uncharted territory for Nell. Occam still owes Nell a date, while her own family is pushing her towards someone else. 

I'm rooting for Nell and Occam since they're not human and don't have to worry about one of the grindylow's killing them if they end up covered in blood. While I wasn't a fan of the additional interest in Nell, you can't ignore it. Not when her family is still part of the Church she left behind. While I was happy that Nell finally let her family in on her secret, I will never accept polygamy. It is abhorrent. I don't believe that a 12-year old child is capable of making adult decisions when it comes to being forced into marrying a much, much older man for his second or third wife. The public is fixated on sexual abuse claims on the news these days, but why are we ignoring what is happening to these young girls?

The following is a short story featuring Occam. I hope you enjoy it! 

How Occam Got His Name

serial short story

By Faith Hunter

Part Four

Getting far enough away from Dickens, Texas to see the night sky and the meteor shower wasn’t hard. Wasn’t like Dickens had many streetlights or nothing. The town had two hundred-eighty people in it, with about as many deserted buildings as families. It was hot, and miserable during the six months of winter and he’d heard his daddy say it was hotter than Satan’s anvil the other six. In August, even at night, the heat seemed to suck the life right out of him.

But the night sky made the heat and the trek worth it all. The black expanse was brilliant with stars, millions of millions, put there by the hand of God, daddy said, put there by a Big Bang according to his teacher—who got in trouble for telling a scientific principle in a Creationist school district.

Trace kinda liked the idea of blending the two, because that would explain the light show of meteors streaking overhead. He’d called it God’s Big Bang Fart. But only to Wayman, and not at home, where his daddy might use his fists to drive the devil outta his soul. Six meteors dashed across the sky, spreading out from one another as if they had broken off a bigger piece.

“God’s farting again,” Wayman said, laughing.

Trace laughed too and made farting sounds with his mouth.

The meteor shower was supposed to be brightest after four a.m. which was after the sickle moon set, but they had plans to be back at the tent and the bikes by then and it was a long hike. He wished he’d brought the cooler of chili. He was hungry and his stomach rumbled.

Mama made the best chili in the state, and she was sharing her secret chili recipe with him, trading out chores for cooking lessons. Mama—Miz Lizzie to the church members—was a saint, to put with daddy. He’d heard one of the church ladies say so. Trace didn’t know much about being a saint, but mama could sing real pretty on Sundays, and she sure could cook.

The numbers of meteors increased, streaking across the sky, some big, some tiny, gone in an eyeblink.

About the time the silver slice of moon was as high overheard as it got this time of year, and the meteors were coming fast and furious, prickles started running up and down the back of Trace’s neck. Maybe them rattlesnakes he’d thought about on the trip out here. Or the bobcat paws they had seen. Bigger than his hand.

Trace sat up, uncertain what he’d heard. Or sensed. He picked up the flashlight and his shotgun.

He flicked on his flashlight and slowly showed it around them. Rocks, sand, prickly grasses. Until his flash caught something golden and silver on the small hillock across the wash from them. Two somethings. They went away. Reappeared. He steadied his light on the golden silver things. And realized they were eyes.

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New York Times and USAToday bestselling fantasy author Faith Hunter was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. Altogether she has 40+ books in print under the names Gary Hunter, Gwen Hunter, and Faith Hunter. As Faith, she writes two contemporary Urban Fantasy series: the Jane Yellowrock series, featuring a Cherokee skinwalker who hunts rogue vampires, and the Soulwood series, featuring earth magic user Nell Ingram. Her Rogue Mage novels are a dark, post-apocalyptic, fantasy series featuring Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage. The role playing game based on the series, is ROGUE MAGE, RPG.

Website: www.faithhunter.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter

Twitter: @hunterfaith

Yellowrock Securities: http://www.yellowrocksecurities.com  

Gwen Hunter: www.gwenhunter.com

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The tour giveaway is for 3 sets of the 1st 2 Soulwood books ( BLOOD OF THE EARTH and CURSE ON THE LAND ) and one $50 Amazon gift card (US residents only)!

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