Kaeleen Donovan, a.k.a. Fury, is a Theosian, a minor goddess, bound to Hecate. She lives in a distant future Seattle where civilization has more or less rebuilt after Gaia lost patience with humanity for the damage we were doing. The triggering event for her rage was the Weather Wars, and while magic is now an ordinary fact of everyday life, weather magic is absolutely forbidden.
So when an underground cult starts using weather magic to create chaos, it's not just a problem. It's a looming disaster. Hecate sends Fury to recover an ancient device from the Weather Wars, the thunderstrike, that the radical cult, the Order of the Black Mist, has acquired and is using.
Fury's friends and allies include the hawk shifter Jason Aerie, a member of the Bonny Fae named Tam, and her spirit guide, Queet. And, of course, Hecate herself, though things might be much easier if the Elder Gods could intervene directly. They can't. She can direct her servants and supporters. She can arm and supply them. But she can't intervene directly. And they have very little time to retrieve the thunderstrike, before Gaia and her agents simply remake the world again and eliminate the annoying, troublesome humans.
That description doesn't do credit to the story. Galenorn has done and impressive job of worldbuilding. Her world is peopled with the creatures of myth and legend, and they're real people strengths and limitations, flaws and virtues. Seattle still has the same name, but it's not the same city we know now, while other cities have disappeared entirely, and new ones with new names emerged. We're not subjected to the too-common silliness of magic being a major force in the world without any other major changes. The World Regency Council has some degree of authority over the corporatocracies that are the regional governments. Shifters, Fae, witches, greenlings, the gods of all the pantheons humans have worshiped, are part of the present reality of life. All technology must be sustainable. Jason runs a magic shop, and Fury's day job is cleaning out unwanted magical influences from business premises.
Fury and her allies are decent people who makes mistakes, but who try to do the right thing and make the world around them better in greater and lesser ways, and I very much cared what happened to them. I'm looking forward to reading subsequent books in the series.
Recommended.
I received this book free from the publisher, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
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