Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: We hear about the rape of girls and women, but thankfully we don’t get a play by play. Or we may have, I won’t lie, I started skipping that part of the book.
I feel like this is my fault. I said in my last Charlie Parker review I was sick and tired of the mystery of Charlie and his dead daughter Jennifer. I didn’t care anymore why he was important since Connolly had taken too long with this mystery and it was starting to feel a lot like X-Files (old school) to me. With the overall alien mythology not making a lot of sense but you enjoy the monster of the week episodes more. Well this book is focused on providing enough context clues to the reader about who Charlie is, or was and how that loops in Louis and Angel too. It just read like a very slow filler book. I won’t lie though, I was glad that the overall Parker mythology while important, moved the plot forward an inch, and that the B plot (or the monster of the week episode) actually was very good and I was thrilled about what happened to all of the bad men in this one. In the end I gave it 3 stars because I am just tired of the riddles that everyone on the honeycomb side of the world speaks. Just tell us who Charlie is/Jennifer is/Louis/Angel what everything means and be done. I also think Connolly is setting this up enough so that Sam, Charlie’s other daughter may take up the reins one day. It seems as if there is a cycle about to start or trying to restart that leaves in question all that we thought we knew.
A River Red With Blood is the 23rd Charlie Parker book. It starts off real slow though. We have Charlie and Moxie meeting up (I love Moxie by the way) and Moxie wanting Charlie to take a case about a boy who ran away from a troubled teen boy school who was later found dead. We find out about Moxie’s past and why he wants Charlie investigating (B plot). With Charlie looking into that, enough things are going on, and Jennifer appearing here and there to allow Charlie, Angel, and Louis to know that something seems to be set in motion to once again take out one of them, but mainly Charlie (A plot). And then we follow three terrible men who have what they call a Game which involves them kidnapping, raping, and murdering women. We eventually see how all of these things connect (in the slowest manner possible) but by the time Charlie gets a bad scent of the troubled school, he knows that something is going on there that is wrong (part of the B plot).
We have our usual characters of Charlie, Angel, Louis, and Jennifer. But we also get more of Marcy in this one and Charlie even saying he’s in love with her. Honestly, I was surprised about that one since he still seemed hung up on his ex, Rachel. We also get outside of Moxie, the Fulci brothers and there’s a whole thing going on there that I am still baffled at, but actually cracked up ati. And we also get the reappearance of a psychic that appeared in The Instruments of Darkness
The flow was up and down. I think because we had way too much time with the three men in this one. Connolly eventually ties that whole thing together, but if you are familiar with his books, it’s slow going at times.
The ending of the book again leaves us with a clue about how dangerous Charlie and Jennifer are and honestly can the next book just be about them. No side plots or quests going on? Just be done with it and move on from it.
