Beyond the Veil by Pippa DaCosta

Several of my friends recommended this book to me and it's free in the Kindle store, so downloading this book and checking it out seemed like a pretty low risk to take, especially with such ringing endorsements in its favor. BEYOND THE VEIL is about a woman named "Muse," who works with metals. She's also half human and half demon, with command over fire and the ability to "read" blades if her blood is spilled and has a long history of abuse where her powers were exploited like a cheap parlor trick.

I thought the world-building in this book was really great. DaCosta creates this fairly complex hierarchy of power among demon kind, with princes being at the top and mongrels like Muse being at the bottom. The descriptions of how she channeled her powers were also interesting, and I liked how her confidence grew as the book went on and she learned that all the bad things she'd been told about herself were basically big fat lies.

Once Muse learns the truth about herself, she realizes that there's good reasons for other demons to want to kill her - including the demon who took her from her cruel and abusive master, and has been her lover for several years. There's a bit of a love triangle between Akil and Stefan, but I thought it was done well, and served to underscore Muse's confusion as she tries to figure out which of them is telling the truth.

If you're a fan of Ilona Andrew's books, I feel like you'll probably like DaCosta. Their writing styles seem similar, and they both seem fond of complex and interesting worlds featuring kick-butt protagonists. I'd give this a higher rating, but I couldn't quite get into it the way I wanted to. There weren't any real flaws, or anything, but it did feel like sometimes the pacing would be off, and I actually set this book aside for a little while until I could get back into it again. I do like this author a lot so far, though - at least based on what I've seen - and I'd check out her other works.

3 to 3.5 out of 5 stars