It probably would have been better to do this last month for Halloween, but I grabbed H. P. Mallory’s, To Kill A Warlock (Dulcie O’Neil, #1)  off of the Amazon KDP list. I enjoyed it, so I went ahead and bought books 2, 3, and 4. (I borrowed book 5). 

These books focus on Dulcie O’Neil. Goodreads describes the series like this: Dulcie O’Neil is a fairy. And not the type to frolic in gardens. She’s a Regulator — a law enforcement agent who monitors the creatures of the netherworld to keep them from wreaking havoc in the mortal world.

Individually each of these books is all alright. Mallory has an easy, comfortable writing style that allows the reader to coast along unhindered. It is much like your best friend is telling you a story over a tall glass of some from-frou alcoholic beverage. There are some interesting characters, a couple steamy sex scenes, and a lot of sexual tension. Taken as a whole, however, I was underwhelmed with the series. 

To Kill A Warlock introduces Dulcie and her friends/coworkers, who share the limelight. However, as the series progresses each book focuses more and more tightly on just Dulcie, which I think is too bad. I know she is the main character, but she isn’t the centre of the world(s). She is like Netherworld crack apparently. All beings lust after her. She almost gets raped more times than I could count. The leaders of The Resistance listen to, and even seem to take orders from her, as soon as she makes herself known. (Guess there isn’t a need for her to prove herself in any manner.) She is the daughter of someone important, the best at her job, etc. The books just seem to spiral closer and closer to her and therefore allow for less and less development of the other characters. Though I did love a few of them. Bram is AWESOME and I really wanted him to find some happiness for himself. He was my favourite character by far. Knight is darned sexy all the way around. Quill keeps you guessing. Dia is a hoot and Sam is Dulcie’s Samwise Gamgee. You can’t help but like her. 

The books do seem to be getting shorter with each new one and ending on sharper and sharper cliffhangers. Book four was especially abrupt. It ended on a such a dun-dun-dun moment that I was almost afraid to even start book five. It is the last one currently available and I didn’t want to commit to another book only to get to the end and find that the pattern of the story not ending on the last page continued (which it does). Toward the end I started to feel like these weren’t even complete books. One bled too easily from one to the other and to be honest I would have preferred it if they weren’t so broken up. Each book recaps each of the previous ones. So, book one was recapped in book two. Books one and two were recapped in book three. Books one, two, and three were covered in book four. You get the point. It got really repetitive and took up a lot of space in the already short books. If there weren’t so many of them this wouldn’t be necessary and I wouldn’t have had to read the same passages over and over again. And considering book five literally started in the middle of the same conversation that book four ended with (to continue the previous example) it is safe to say the two books read as one. 

(I don’t know if it is coincidence, but I seem to be seeing this happen a lot lately. I have to wonder if the spread of the cheap ebook has somehow made it appear OK to create series that are almost closer to extend chapters of the same story instead of actual separate books. -Food for thought)

All-in-all there were aspects of this series that grated on my nerves, mostly because they emerged so often (same phrases used in every book for example). But I wouldn’t have read all five of them if there wasn’t some value to them. The story is an interesting one. You want to know what happens in the end…whenever that might be. There are enough alpha males pumping testosterone into the air to keep a hot blooded female smiling. Mallory lets her imagination run wild on the mystical creature front (though is is also a distraction and could be considered a detraction) and the writing is quirky and fun. I might have enjoyed it more if I had put some time between the books, but that’s just not the way I like to read a series. It’s worth picking up if you have the patience for it though.