Review - Unbinding

Unbinding
by Eileen Wilks

Eileen Wilks' World of the Lupi series is sort of an alternate history, slightly post-apocalyptic, urban fantasy romance series. In this world, we have Lupi (sort of like hereditable werewolves who are only male and have a deeply religious bent), Sidhe, humans with Gifts, witches, dragons, demons and various other mythological creatures. Needless to say, with all of that going on, this is NOT the place to start this series. This is a richly textured world and mythology, but of late I had started to fear that it was making the mistake other series I've read has, that of building the world in inorganic ways merely to drive the series. I am so happy to see that that is categorically not the case here. I had a moment of tummy butterflies when I saw this story would feature Kai and Nathan rather than returning the Rule and Lily, despite the fact that I enjoy them as characters, because it felt like one more piece of evidence that the world and the series were devolving. Honestly, I shouldn't have doubted Wilks. Kai and Nathan's involvement with the god of chaos makes perfect sense, as does the god's actions in the previous book and this one. By the end of it there's not only a nice little resolution to some previous plots, but the diverging worlds Wilks seemed to be building have much more firmly been shown how they are really more of a tapestry than spin offs. It all felt really organic, and except for the fact that they reference quite a bit of stuff that obviously happened of the page, I was really pleased. More specifically on the relationship, Kai had some major personal growth that I enjoyed seeing, Nathan had a bit of relationship growth himself in realizing he can't just go it all alone, and it was really nice to see how their relationship is shaking out. I'll look forward to seeing more of them in the future. I'm already lusting after Mind Games, and the teaser at the end of this book doesn't even have any of our recognizable characters in it.

5 stars