Doubletake
Cal Leandros, Book# 7
By Rob Thurman
ISBN # 0451464443
Author website: http://robthurman.net/books/cal-leandros/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Verushka
I’ve always been a huge fan of Rob Thurman’s Cal Leandros series. I discovered it just as I discovered Supernatural on television and while I’ve since stopped watching Supernatural, I’ve remained a fan of this series. Cal and Niko remain in this novel fiercely devoted to each other, no matter what. That strength and Thurman’s adept touch at bringing their life together has made this series riveting reading, but I found this one to be somewhat uneven.
The book opens with Robin hiring Cal and Niko to police a Puck family reunion. Hot on the heels of this job, Cal and Niko have family reunions of a sort of their own. Niko’s father Kalakos reappears asking for their help in tracking down a monster called Janus who is homing in on those with Vayash blood and killing them, which means the brothers are targets. This metal monster was made by Haphaestus and, yes, he’s alive and Robin goes above and beyond in dealing with him. Cal’s “family reunion” is with another half-Auphe called Grimm who needs him to rebuild the Auphe race.
Don’t get me wrong – Thurman’s writing is in top form here. I got more of a sense of how Cal views his brother and how much he knows Niko has given up for him. Thurman also shows us in a tender, sad way why nothing and no-one will come between Cal and Niko through a small flashback that had me tearing up.
What didn’t work in this novel was the balance and focus on Grimm and Kalakos in the novel. While Kalakos plays an important part of the conclusion to the novel, he is barely a presence through the novel, he hovers in the background mostly, while Grimm has more of a presence instead. Had Kalakos had more of a presence, had we had more of an insight into him and Niko and that relationship fleshed out more – even if all Niko felt for him was hate – this novel would have been better for it.
Another consequence of this uneven balance in the focus afforded to characters is that Robin, despite having a strong presence in the beginning of the book, suddenly disappears and calls in with some information. On the one hand, this gave Thurman some chance to focus on Grimm and Kalakos and the brothers, but because the writing accompanying these characters was so uneven and Robin’s exit for this book just as uneven, in the end, none of it worked. Robin’s absence and the way Thurman explained was a glaring problem in the book for me, especially as Cal kept noting how Robin would never disappear on them. And as a reader of this series for seven books now, I couldn’t agree more.
In the end, a disappointing addition to the Leandros series.
