Royal Street - Early Book Review

Royal Street (Sentinels of New Orleans #1)
by Suzanne Johnson

What is it about:
As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ's boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond.

Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.

While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover.

To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo.

What did I think of it:
I really enjoyed this book.

Johnson creates an intruiging world with a unique and cool magic system. I really like how she uses New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina as a setting while still showing respect for what happened there.

DJ is a likeable heroine although her mixed feelings for the men in her life (yes: love triangle!) made me want to kick her from time to time. The inclusion of famous characters from New Orleans' history was fun and there were a couple of characters that I wouldn't mind seeing again in future books.

The writing is pleasant and all in all this book is a delightful read full of action and suspense.

I'm looking forward to the next book in this series, because this book made me hungry for more.

Why should you read it:
It's a cool Urban Fantasy set in New Orleans.



Expected publication: April 10th 2012