#Review - The Guardian by Sarah Fine #Urban #Fantasy

Series: The Immortal Dealers# 2
Format: E-Galley, 284 pages
Release Date: October 23, 2018
Publisher: 47North
Source: NetGalley/Publisher
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Life and death are a gamble for a girl fighting to save humanity in a world she’s only beginning to understand.

One minute, Ernestine “Ernie” Terwilliger was a fairly normal young woman with an almost normal life. Absent father. Peculiar mother. Family secrets. The next, she was hurled into a land where the Immortal Dealers are waging a battle between good and evil—and where the fate of the world is in the cards.

Having only started to master her own deck, the inexperienced Ernie places the wrong bet on the right guy at the worst time. That’s when she’s bounced into another realm and trapped there by a formidable and power-hungry rogue Dealer who knows more about Ernie’s fractured family than Ernie herself does.

Now, Ernie’s fight to free herself is only the beginning. As the secrets of Ernie’s father and his own relics of power start to surface, Ernie will need to tell friend from foe—a feat not as easy as it seems.

At least now she has a full deck…because to survive secrets, betrayals, and dangerous dimensions, she’ll need to deal the best hand.

 

The Guardian is the second installment in author Sara Fine's Immortal Dealers series. The story continues the adventures of Ernestine "Ernie" Terwilliger who has become one of the Immortal Dealers after the events of the first installment. She has been given her first solo mission by Andy, the Forger, which takes her to the chaos ridden area of Russia and Ukraine. In all reality, Ernie has only had her full deck of cards for amount 8 weeks now and she is getting used to the power behind them and what she is able to do with her cards.

Ernie, by the way, is the Diamondback dealer having won that honor in the first installment. Ernie has some other issues as well. The first is the desire to find out what happened to her father who disappeared 20 years ago thanks to Virginia. The second is to find out why Gabe has been incognito for almost 2 months. The third is to prepare for anything when it comes to another Virginia aka the Chicken Dealer who betrayed Ernie and her friends in the previous story, and is pretty much the most dangerous character in this series.

Ernie's confrontation with Virginia ends up with her being sent to an alternative pocket dimension. The story takes some interesting turns in this world which I won't spoil. I will say that there is a giant Grasshopper and a rogue dealer and some moments where you have to wonder if Ernie is going to be stuck in this dimension just like her father apparently was thanks to Virginia. One could say that both the rogue dealer, and the key secrets she learns leads to an action packed second half of the story.

Other than Virginia, the other main villain of this story is Andy, the Forger, who loves to use his Immortal Dealers to stir up chaos. Ernie's connection to Legs, the Diamondback snake, has grown into an interesting relationship where the snake is very protective of Ernie. One of the main reasons I like this series is that Ernie isn't all over the place with where she stands. She's really not all in when it comes to creating chaos. She rather stop the chaos and those who are responsible for it.

My one major disappointment with this story is th angst and ongoing conflict between Ernie and Gave, another Immortal Dealer called Kestrel. They don't spend all that much time together in the beginning, but they end up together more so in the second half, and the final gut wrenching chapters. There is a pretty big shake up that happens in this story which leads to my curiosity as to what the author will come up next, and how it will further affect Ernie and Gabe's future together.  

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