Okay, despite all of my misgivings about this series since it went off the rails in Touch of the Demon, I was still excited for this book. And, lucky for me, it didn't completely disappoint. 
 Rowland seems to have this thing about constantly changing the direction of this series. First it was a procedural cop with supernatural elements style (which is the best part), then it went into high fantasy for a book and a half, then it was standard filler urban fantasy, and now it's military-ish with supernatural and sci-fi. Whew! 
 Despite liking the book, I didn't like the story. Earth is going to hell because rifts to the demon realm are opening everywhere. Suddenly Kara is the top arcane expert in the entire world because why not. Once you get past that nonsense, we dive into the Elinor crap. Honestly, I never cared about Elinor and her magical vagina that all the demons lords (sans Szerain) seemed to want, so making almost an entire book about rescuing her was zzzzzzzzzz. 
 What saves this book from being a sad, sorry shadow of its predecessors is a few things. Kara is awesome again. She has some moments of serious juvenile behaviour, but other than that, I loved her like I did in previous books (re: before she hooked up with Mzatal). Szerain/Ryan is back. He's not quite Ryan and not quite Szerain, but it's a happy medium that I loved. The scenes between him and Kara were the best. Ashava and Zack are also back, somewhat, although they show up at the end. Eilahn makes a brief reappearance, which is awesome because I love her. Mzatal is barely around. He has a few "big" scenes before disappearing, which I am fine with. I never liked him or his weird relationship with Kara. I'll never understand why Rowland teased Kara/Ryan so much and gave us Kara/Rhyzkhal for four and a half books, unless it was for some steamy sex scenes, when Kara keeps going on about how Mzatal is the one. Gag. I'm also over Bryce pining for Jill when she's obviously in love with Zack. 
 We get a TON of info in this book, which mostly explains what happened up until now, reveals some things to explain why what happened, happened, and then we get a heaping load of what the fuckery at the end. I'm not saying it's aliens, but... it's aliens. How all of this is going to be wrapped up in one last book when the game just changed again, well... I don't know.