The Madness Underneath
Aug. 12th, 2014 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Madness Underneath is the second in Maureen Johnson's Shades of London series, and continues the story of Rory Deveaux, who helps a secret police unit track and eliminate homicidal ghosts in London.
The first in the series very definitely set things up for future stories with the same characters, but was also pretty much a stand-alone book. The second was a lot more scattershot, bringing in various different strands of plot but without much cohesion and with no resolution at the end of the book - in fact, it ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger, which was annoying as the next in the series isn't due out until March 2015.
Still, I like the characters, and the set-up is interesting, so I'll probably continue with the next one when it's available. I much prefer this series to the other books I've read by Johnson - the supernatural premise brings additional intrigue to proceedings, thus pushing the teen romance aspects to the background a bit more. And, when the teen romance does appear, it's dealt with in a more interesting (and amusing) way, so it's less of a bore.
The first in the series very definitely set things up for future stories with the same characters, but was also pretty much a stand-alone book. The second was a lot more scattershot, bringing in various different strands of plot but without much cohesion and with no resolution at the end of the book - in fact, it ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger, which was annoying as the next in the series isn't due out until March 2015.
Still, I like the characters, and the set-up is interesting, so I'll probably continue with the next one when it's available. I much prefer this series to the other books I've read by Johnson - the supernatural premise brings additional intrigue to proceedings, thus pushing the teen romance aspects to the background a bit more. And, when the teen romance does appear, it's dealt with in a more interesting (and amusing) way, so it's less of a bore.
