Unleashed by John Levitt – review

Unleashed by John Levitt is the third urban fantasy in the Dog Days series. From the San Francisco aura described in the first paragraph to the magic on the last page, this book never let up. It’s action-packed danger, a see-saw between clues and just staying alive.

Not only did the characters grow and change in Unleashed, we get some unfinished business cleaned up. There were a few loose ends from novels one and two, but nothing that seemed major until this book, where we get to see what has been festering in the background. Mason has accepted that as a practioner of magic, he has some responsibility to the community. He’s more willing to look into problems and help clean them up. He’s still impatient and impulsive, but he’s also getting smarter.

Levitt uses his respect for and experience with music to describe magic and its traits, an analogy that really works, especially if you’ve ever heard someone play that has an indescribable talent, something beyond the mere human touch. His world-building is subtle; many times magic doesn’t even seem magic. It’s just another color or iridescent hue across the pallet. It’s a dog being a dog–is it magic, intelligence, or both?

Levitt’s biggest strength in world-building is his ability to create depth in characters–from the monsters to the people and everything in-between. There’s a subtle message that big, ugly and mean don’t always equate to true monster. There’s even a case made that those hanging on to what we view as sanity might be just a horse of a different color–a dangerous horse, but of value nonetheless. When dealing with something beautiful, be it a person or a place, you never know whether to expect poison or peace. The constant mixing of the world adds a realism that is unexpected, but delightful.

The mystery plot in Unleashed is very strong, probably the strongest of the three books and certainly the most tangled. There were enough red herrings to keep me guessing all the way through the book. Who was the guilty party? Who??? Every time Mason and Lou came close, there were more clues–and more false trails to be explored.

I could nitpick a character flaw or two and definitely pick on an area where I was pretty sure the logic failed, but the plot moved so quickly, a minute detail here or there wasn’t important enough to hold me back. Magic isn’t always logical, and neither are monsters–be they human or other.

There are very few books I want to read twice. Unleashed made me want to go back and re-read books one and two. And before I was even done with Unleashed, I wanted to read it all over again.