For me, this book got off to a slightly clunky start as we caught up with events since the violent and traumatic end to the last book, "Flame In The Dark". I liked the idea that Nell and Occam were both still recovering rather than being magically all better but I could have done with less "Previously, on Soulwood" and just getting on with the story.

My favourite parts of this story dealt with Nell's relationship with her sister, Mud and her visits back to her family in the Cloud Of God compound. Mud is irrepressible and the dialogue between her and Nell sparkles.

I liked that Nell is getting stronger and more confident of her place in Unit 18. She's no longer the Probationer and no longer the Widow woman / Churchwoman figuring out a new and strange world. Her confrontation with her boss's boss, Firewind, was well done and shows that Nell is being to understand her own worth and her own strength.

I also enjoyed the way that Nell dealt with the main vampires in the book. She stands up to Ming of Glass without overstepping into an attack and she treats Yummy fairly and offers her something as close to friendship as she can manage with a vampire. It was refreshing to get such a different perspective on vampires than the Yellowrock vamp-killer turned insider view.

It seems to me that Nell is becoming a little less human with each book. Or perhaps she's just getting to know herself better. WHAT she is becoming is hard to say. Faith Hunter has come up with an original set of powers for Nell. I'm curious to see what Nell will do with them.

Yet again, Faith Hunter has provided an above average urban fantasy story that was a fun read. She's developing the characters and opening up the possibilities of the series. The plot was a little straight forward in a save-the-world-from-the-demon-summoner kind of way but the powers used were unusual and the action was well described. The heart of the story lies with the characters. If you like Nell and her sister, you'll enjoy this book.

Hello Readers, Welcome to my world on this fine Tuesday! Today, I am sharing the newest release in Faith Hunter's urban fantasy Soulwood series! Enjoy and don't forget to add Cirlce of the Moon to your shelves!

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Nell can draw magic from the land around her, and lately she's been using it to help the Psy-Law Enforcement Division, which solves paranormal crimes. Joining the team at PsyLED has allowed her to learn more about her powers and the world she always shunned--and to find true friends.

Head agent Rick LaFleur shifts into a panther when the moon calls him, but this time, something has gone wrong. Rick calls Nell from a riverbank--he's naked, with no memory of how he came to be there, and there's a dead black cat, sacrificed in a witch circle and killed by black magic, lying next to him.

Then more animals turn up dead, and team rushes to investigate. A blood-witch is out to kill. But when it seems as if their leader is involved in the crime, the bonds that hold the team together could shatter at any moment.

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Nell has joined the PsyLED team which allows her to learn more about her powers and to make friends, which she’s definitely going to need when a blood-witch sets out to kill. The story is full of wonderfully strong, bold characters that readers can really get behind as they cheer them on and the magical side and uniqueness of these characters adds lots of spice and intrigue to the story. There’s a bit of upset between the team members as it seems as though the bad guy is targeting Rick which adds to the sense of expectation and suspense, especially as the more the team discovers, the more they realize that they are in a race to stop the bad guy from unleashing an apocalyptic event.

The fast paced plot flows smoothly throughout the story ensuring that readers are completely enthralled by all the adrenaline pumping excitement, thrilling intrigue and dangerous bad guys. Nell not only is working on the case that has quite a few unexpected twists and some very malicious happenings, she also has to deal with some personal family issues and of course she also has to handle the Church and their opposition against her ‘evil’ ways. This keeps things real interesting so there’s never a dull moment to be found and the conclusion to this story is one explosive and energetic endeavor that has readers biting their nails in apprehension and expectation.

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Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40265759-circle-of-the-moon

BookLikes - http://booklikes.com/circle-of-the-moon-faith-hunter/book,13986110

BookBub - https://www.bookbub.com/books/circle-of-the-moon-by-faith-hunter

Riffle - https://www.rifflebooks.com/books/1039467

GBooks - https://books.google.com/books?id=W4yFDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=faith+hunter+circle+of+the+moon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRpqPl0fPgAhVEQ6wKHU9uBbcQ6AEIKjAA

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stars Nell Ingram, who channels her power from the earth.

Circle of the Moon is the 4th book in the Soulwood series

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/series/144830-soulwood

Author - http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/books/soulwood-series/

Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DDMLZMY?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

.1 How Occam Got His Name
.5 Blood in Her Veins (Jane Yellowrock stories)
1 Blood of the Earth
2 Curse on the Land
3 Flame in the Dark
4 Circle of the Moon

Set in the same world as Faith Hunter's New York Times bestselling Jane Yellowrock novels

Author - http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/books/jane-yellowrock-series/

Next Up for Faith Hunter is

Shattered Bonds

Jane Yellowrock # 13

October 29, 2019

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42438218-shattered-bonds

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AVAILABLE in print or ebook

Penguin - https://www.penguin.com/book/circle-of-the-moon-by-faith-hunter/9780399587948

Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399587942?tag=randohouseinc7986-20

B&N - http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8373827-11819508?sid=PRHEFFDF5A7F1&url=http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9780399587948

BaM - http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8373827-10876509?SID=PRHEFFDF5A7F1--9780399587948&url=http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780399587948

IndieBound - http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780399587948?aff=penguinrandom

Powells - http://www.powells.com/book/-9780399587948?utm_source=randomhouse&utm_campaign=randomhouse&utm_content=PRHEFFDF5A7F1--9780399587948

iBooks - https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1390280167?at=11l3IH&ct=PRHEFFDF5A7F1--9780399587955

GPlay -
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Faith_Hunter_Circle_of_the_Moon?id=yqJdDwAAQBAJ

Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/circle-of-the-moon-4

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Faith Hunter's Jane Yellowrock series is a dark urban fantasy. Jane is a full blooded Cherokee skinwalker and hunter of rogue-vampires in a world of weres, witches, vampires, and other supernats.

Her Rogue Mage novels—Bloodring, Seraphs, Host, and the RPG Rogue Mage—feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality.

The Soulwood series is a dark-urban fantasy / paranormal police procedural /para-thriller series featuring Nell Nicholson Ingram, an earth magic user and Special gent of PsyLED.

Faith writes full-time, tries to keep house, and is a workaholic. She gave up cooking for lent one year and the oven hasn’t been turned on since. Okay – that’s a joke. She does still make cold cereal and sandwiches. Occasionally, she remembers to turn on Roomba (that she named Duma$$ because it fell down the stairs once.)

Faith researches in great detail, and tries most everything her characters do. Research led to her life’s passions – jewelry making, orchids, bones, travel, white-water kayaking, and writing.

Jewelry-making was the occupation of two of her characters: Thorn St. Croix, the Rogue Mage, and the main character of BloodStone, written by her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She fell in love with the art form. Faith makes, wears, and sometimes gives away her jewelry as promo items to fans and as prizes in contests. See her FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/official.fait... for pics. She works with stones, pearls, crystal, and glass, wire wrapping larger, undrilled, focal stones. Labradorite, Amazonite, apatite, aquamarine, and prehnite are her favorite stones.

Faith loves orchids. Her favorite time of year is when several are blooming. Pictures can be seen at her FaceBook page. And yes, she collects bones and skulls. Many of her orchid pics are juxtaposed with bones and skulls —a fox, cat, dog, cow skull, goat, and deer skull, (that is, unfortunately, falling apart) and the jawbone of an ass. She just received a boar skull, and the skull of a mountain lion (legally purchased from a US tannery) killed in the wild.

She and her husband RV, traveling to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.

And that leads Faith to kayaking – her very favorite sport. Faith discovered whitewater paddling when she was researching her (Gwen Hunter) mystery book, Rapid Descent. She took a lesson and—after a bout of panic attacks from fear of drowning—discovered she loved the sport.

Faith is one of the founders and a participant at the now defunct and archived www.MagicalWords.net, an online writing forum geared to helping writers. And she is a voracious reader.

Under other pen names, notably, Gwen Hunter, she writes action adventure, mysteries, and thrillers. As Gwen, she is a winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for Fresh Talent in 1995 in the UK, and won a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award in 2008. As Faith, her books have been on the New York Times and USA Today Bestseller lists, been nominated for various awards and won an Audie Award with Khristine Hvam. Under all her pen names, she has more than 40 books, anthologies, and complications in print in 30 countries.

For more, including a list of her books, see www.faithhunter.net , www.gwenhunter.com , and www.magicalwords.net. To keep up with her daily, join her fan pages at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/official.fait...

Website - http://www.faithhunter.net/

Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/234115.Faith_Hunter

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter

Twitter - https://twitter.com/HunterFaith

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This is an anthology in the Jane Yellowrock series containing "Snafu," "Black Water," and "Off the Grid."

I'm not sure how anyone not familiar with the Jane Yellowrock series would fare with the stories (I'm almost finished with the series).  

"Snafu" -- 4 stars.  A good adventure, an episode within the series more than a standalone short story if reader unfamiliar with Jane and her peeps.  But, I enjoyed it.

"Black Water" -- not rating.  This was flash fiction, not short story.  A couple of pages of Jane shows up, has a fight outside and meets first boss then story stops.  Ugh.  Waste of my time.

"Off the Grid" -- 4 stars.  I jumped to this story because was the reason I'm reading this anthology.  Reason being the introduction of Nell, the heroine of author's Soulwood books.  What I wanted (the backstory to how Nell and Jane met) plus introduced the vampire character "Yummy."  Necessary to the Jane Yellowrock or Soulwood series?  Nope, pretty much the events are summarized elsewhere in series books.  But a good story if you already know Jane.

Yeah, right. Nasty pedophile accidentally fell.

From:

Nell continues to work with PsyLED, the supernatural crime fighting organisation. And more and more she is drifting away from her insular church routes, leaving behind its thinking and training. Her magic is also growing as her insight and power is becoming more and more of an asset to PsyLED

But when they become embroiled in a supernatural murder case that involves a United States Senator, Nell may have to draw on her power more deeply than ever before: with the risk she may lose all of the new freedom and experiences she has discovered

I do like more of Nell’s self-growth and awareness this book; her acknowledgement and clear labelling of her experiences as abuse and how that has changed her. How this affects her views of current relationships, how it has scarred her and how it colours her interactions in real life.

I also like how she’s even applying this to the “saviour narrative” that she learned and is more and more challenging. Like she acknowledges her family tried to save her from abuse and that marrying John saved her from a far worse fate. But she equally can see how her relationship with John was abusive and twisted her own experiences and expectations of relationships. Just as she loves her family and knows they tried to help her, equally she has little faith in them keeping her little sister safe against the church. Her whole complicated relationship with her family is fascinating- her love and faith in her family tempered with her deep, wary awareness of what they’re part of. And even the family recognises that - the confines they live in that they can’t seem to break: they rely on Nell with her outsider ways to do things they will

Then there’s the love triangle - and for once a love triangle I actually like: because of what it recognises for Nell. The conflict of old versus new, safety and familiarity over what could be and, ultimately, who Nell is and who she has become

Equally I love how Nell is both fiercely confronting anyone else who would treat her in a patronising or sexist manner, and challenging her own church instilled attitudes while also realising that not everything that’s happening around her fits in that lens: especially with the wereanimals and other supernaturals.

Nell is the gem of this story: her growth her, experiences, her interactions with the others really makes this series. And on top of that we have her unique supernatural nature, how her powers control and lure her, the dangers of them, the alienness all add up to something quite unique.

On top of this we have an excellent world setting with some intriguing supernaturals that do not occur in many other places - but at the same time the plurality and breadth of the world doesn’t impose on the story. The focus is far more on the current unknown than the hugeness all around and it is an excellent setting to have a the police investigation, with a lot of grunt work, following evidence, dead ends, red herrings, more grunt work and general, despite all the woo-woo, a very realistic look at an actual investigation

On top of this I like that Nell actually lives in between her investigation. She is concerned with food, she cooks, he has family commitments, she gets stuck in traffic, she commutes. She sleeps.

Which also brings in the supernatural and the complexities that came from this revelation, including conflict within Psyled and the difficult questions about what to do with dangerous and potentially hostile supernaturals: can you even judge an entire species? I like this, I like it a lot. But… yes, there are moments when I stopped and thought “hey, wait, what just happened? Who is this? Why? What?”. Sometimes I did get lost in the cast of characters.

We do have some diversity as well - in addition to Nell’s battle against partriarchal norms, she has a number of women around her: 3 members of Psyled are women, including the second in command of the unit, JoJo, a Black woman (who is, interestingly, the only member of of the group who isn’t a supernatural. Her usefulness to the group isn’t special powers - but intelligence and accomplishment and education. This is particular noteworthy because her value is one that is literally based on her own achievement rather than the special magical woo-woo she happened to luck into and it’s a wonderful subversion of the POC-as-source-of-woo-woo trope), the ultimate head of Psyled Soul, a witch and Nell herself. We have a female Asian vampire who doesn’t play a major role but is definitely an influential force because of what she represents

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