Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Release Date: August 30, 2022
Publisher: Gallery/Saga Press
Source: Publisher
Genre: Dark Fantasy
#1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author
Charlaine Harris returns to her alternate history of the United States
where magic is an acknowledged but despised power in this fourth
installment of the Gunnie Rose series.
Felicia, Lizbeth
Rose’s half-sister and a student at the Grigori Rasputin school in San
Diego—capital of the Holy Russian Empire—is caught between her own
secrets and powerful family struggles. As a granddaughter of Rasputin,
she provides an essential service to the hemophiliac Tsar Alexei,
providing him the blood transfusions that keep him alive. Felicia is
treated like a nonentity at the bedside of the tsar, and at the school
she's seen as a charity case with no magical ability. But when Felicia
is snatched outside the school, the facts of her heritage begin to
surface. Felicia turns out to be far more than the Russian-Mexican
Lizbeth rescued. As Felicia’s history unravels and her true abilities
become known, she becomes under attack from all directions. Only her
courage will keep her alive.
The Serpent in Heaven is the Fourth installment in author Charlaine Harris's Gunnie Rose series. The story follows Felicia Karakarova, Lizbeth's half sister, who is in a Grigori school for magic in the Holy Russian Empire located in San Diego. Felicia, who readers first met in An Easy Death and again in The Russian Cage, is a character who found her feet in the previous installment and now will face her own fears and challenges. Felicia has grown-up. Literally. Instead of being 11, as previously thought, we now learn that she's closer to 16 thanks to her fathers magic.
While struggling to fit in at her school, and dealing with a roommate who isn't that supportive, Felicia is kidnapped on her way to spend dinner with a friends family. But when there's a second attack shortly after she escapes her kidnappers, it is clear that Felicia is in fact the intended target. The other kids in school have wealthy families that can pay ransoms and all she has is her half-sister, Lizbeth. Thanks to unknown members of her mother's family who live in Mexico, she's about ready to grow up in ways that will blow your mind.
As a back story, Felicia grew up in Ciudad Juarez slums. Her father spelled her to remain little knowing that Felicia's mothers family would one day find her and use her for political power. Now that that spell has been broken, the school doesn't know what to do with Felicia. As a granddaughter of Rasputin, she provides an essential service to the hemophiliac Tsar Alexei, providing him the blood transfusions that keep him alive. That alone makes her invaluable. While her half sister is cross country, all she has is a few friends like Callista, Felix and Peter who is the brother of Eli.
I am kind of torn. There are outlets that claim that this is the final installment in the Gunnie Rose series, and yet, we really didn't have Rose, or Eli involved. We only get some hints as to what the couple is up to. Felicia is clearly powerful, and in this book, she struggles not only with her magic, and surviving a family that she knew nothing about, but she's now falling for a boy who her family may want to spend his life with someone else. In the end, I will recommend this story to those who have stuck with the series from the beginning.
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