DRAAKENWOOD, Whyborne & Griffin series doesn't sag at #9

DRAAKENWOOD
JORDAN L. HAWK (Whyborne & Griffin #9)
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Someone is killing members of the old families…and the evidence points to Whyborne.

Widdershins has been unusually quiet for months. But now a mysterious creature from the Outside is on the loose, assassinating members of the town’s old families by draining their blood. Whyborne and Griffin set out to solve the mystery—but as the evidence piles up, the police begin to suspect Whyborne himself is the murderer.

Now Whyborne must both clear his name and stop the horrors the monster threatens to unleash. His only hope: an alliance with his old enemies the Endicotts.

Because something terrible lurks in the Draakenwood, and it will stop at nothing to seize control of the maelstrom itself.

Draakenwood is the ninth book in the Whyborne & Griffin series, where magic, mystery, and m/m romance collide with Victorian era America.

I purchased this book with my very own United States dollars...

... the same year that I realized I was losing out on DRCs because publishers realized I'd review books I bought for myself. Hence never having reviewed it before.

Oh myyy, as Takei would say. There's more than I expected in this ninth entry in the ongoing series. The ongoing plots never plod, but here they go from brisk trot to gallop both on the personal and overarching stakes fronts. Let me assure you that there is nothing series-drooping in this outing. I do most especially love the anachronistic way these men refer to their other halfs as "husbands"!

I was surprised and pleased that Whyborne's sister Persephone met her match. (Knock next time, you oaf!) I was also pleased that Whyborne Senior made such huge strides in his unwilling quest to become a decent human being. Streets to go, mind, but the growth curve is impressive. I like that redemption is still possible for even the worst of people in Author Hawk's world.

Speaking of worlds...Griffin continues to make Whyborne's miserable, first with that infernal rackety Oldsmobile, and this book with the ghastly newfangled telephone. Poor Whyborne, a fuddy-duddy at heart, is yoked by all-conquering love to a gadget-mad technophile. What's a man who is every inch a librarian in his soul to do?

Well, fight more evil, of course; the stakes are still there, the Endicotts have living relatives, Nyarlathotep isn't decisively defeated yet. Those hounds...!! And capable henches continue to abound. Christine, the ever-waspish, always faithful BFF, her husband Iskander (who is never that much limned, of course) and now Whyborne's librarian secretary Miss Parkhurst is in the family in every way. Really, isn't this the reason one reads series books? The stories are like our extended friend groups only easier to keep track of because they're in finished story arcs. Or about-to-be-finished story arcs...thinking of the Ketoi as truly underexplored arc-havers.

But here's the deal: The arcs all end. I wager that, if you start here (don't!), you'll feel the unnerved certainty that you've stumbled into a nest of nutjobs. Go back to #1, Widdershins, to get the place in the Cthuluverse and the dramatis personae straight. (So to speak.) I recommend them all, in order. Apart from my cavils over a certain inevitable monster-of-the-weekness and the double PoV in this story (out of keeping, not smoothly integrated), this story earns my smiling, loving approval.