Raven's Peak

Guest review by JC Steel

Title: Raven's Peak
Author: Lincoln Cole
Publication date: 07/05/2016
Publisher: Kindle Press
Kindle Unlimited: No
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 4 out of 5


Amazon blurb:
A quiet little mountain town is hiding a big problem. When the townsfolk of Raven's Peak start acting crazy, Abigail Dressler is called upon to discover the root of the evil affecting people. She uncovers a demonic threat unlike any she's ever faced and finds herself in a fight just to stay alive.

Abigail rescues Haatim Arison from a terrifying fate and discovers that he has a family legacy in the supernatural that he knows nothing about. Now she's forced to protect him, which is easy, but also to trust him if she wants to save the townsfolk of Raven's Peak. Trust, however, is something hard to have for someone who grew up living on the knife's edge of danger.

Can they discover the cause of the town's insanity and put a stop to it before it is too late?

Review:
Raven’s Peak takes a unique twist on urban fantasy, painting a thin veneer of normality across a reality of madness, murder, and demons, held back by the forces of the Council, a quasi-religious Star Chamber that works in total secrecy. However, the Council has its back to the wall, and their decision to bring one of their top hunters out of the black site prison where he’s been since he got too good at thinking like his prey precipitates the events of the whole story.

Lincoln Cole has managed to weave a lot of the Christian mythos of demons and exorcism into this plot, and the result is a nice mix of the darkness of The Exorcist and the choreographed violence of Kill Bill. While I felt that the book could benefit from another proofread, the author’s talent and imagination were more than enough to draw me into the book, and his story and characters kept me there. The contrast between Haatim, a privileged son of the mundane world, and Abigail, a Council hunter trying to claw her way back after a demonic possession that cost her her mentor and most of her standing in the Order, is particularly well done.

Although Raven’s Peak is clearly the first in a series, it makes a strong standalone read and avoids the temptation to end in a real cliff-hanger. Abigail is guaranteed to please any reader who prefers heroines whose IQ exceeds their bust size, and the layers in the plot combined with the depth of the characters offers rich ground for many future books. I’ll be looking forwards to the next one.

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