19 hours and 42 minutes to go on this omnibus. I don't know that I'll manage to get through the full thing.

Did I realize the first time I read this that Damian's "aural blade + focus" is a magical light saber? Because it totally is. The focus acts as a hilt, and the blade emerges from it in the form of crackling energy.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I'm "rereading" this via listening to the audiobook. Both my mom and I got codes for free audiobooks by this author when we went to Book Bonanza. My mom really enjoyed the audiobooks (we both got the omnibus edition containing the first three books) and seemed surprised when I told her I hadn't enjoyed what I'd read.

I was hoping that this would somehow be better in audiobook form. Some of its problems are less noticeable, mostly because my attention keeps wandering, but I wouldn't say it's better. The narrator's voice has a quality to it that makes it seem like he's constantly repressing a smile - just about everything he says sounds like it's about to lead to a joke.

It's over. I managed to finish.

Asher may have learned his lesson after the first book. Only one joke, that I can recall, about vampires eating ferrets, and Damian didn't kill any animals for giggles. Granted, most of the readers who'd have been bothered by those things would have quit after Book 1. The only reason I continued on was because I bought both books together and generally hate offloading books without at least attempting to read them.

Overall, I think this was a better book than the first one. Still, I thought I'd be in for an easier read since I'd already been introduced to this world in Book 1. Instead, Asher added a little over half a dozen more named characters readers had to remember and keep track of, a few more supernatural beings, and more world rules. It was exhausting.

On the plus side, I'm now done with all of the physical books in this series that I own (I have a freebie omnibus audiobook that includes books 1 to 3, but I don't know that I'll ever listen to it). I plan on offloading them soon.

I'll use this for my Vampires square. The Ren Faire bit was extremely short, so Creepy Carnivals would feel a bit like cheating. Also, it's probably better for me to stay focused on my best chance for getting my first and possibly only Bingo in this game.

Okay, I counted. During a slightly more than 6-page breakfast/strategizing session, the characters laughed 6 times. The number increases to 7 if you count "For some reason, everyone found that rather amusing." Now I'm wondering if the laughter rate is always approximately one laugh per page during the non-action scenes.

Nice, I'm now a little over halfway through.

Book 2 feels more focused than Book 1, but I'm still having trouble following everything that's going on. Philip, a fellow necromancer and Zola's ex-boyfriend, wants to bring a demon into this world for...reasons. Damian's blood can help him accomplish that, but so can a special stone containing a piece of the demon. Damian and Zola have some of the things they need in order to stop Philip, but I can't remember what else they have to do. Right now everyone's in an all-out battle against Philip and it's going badly. You'd think they'd want to keep Damian safe and hidden, since Philip could skip using the stone and just decide to use Damian's blood instead (unless I missed something?), but no, Damian's out there fighting alongside everyone else.

I'm joining the ranks of those reviewers who are annoyed by how often Damian and his group laugh about things. At some point, someone must have told Asher that he needed to have lighter moments in his series, so his characters are constantly cracking jokes and laughing, even when those jokes aren't really all that funny. And I just noticed one of his writing tics: he often ends scenes and chapters with characters laughing, smiling, or grinning.