There are times when a book that might have been otherwise been entertaining ticks me off. I will still read the book, but chances are I’m mostly reading to see how much more bad it can get. (It is the only reason I was able to read The Warriors of Spider and sequels all the way through.) This is more or less the case with Wraith, which managed to annoy me on several different occasions.

Our heroine is one Zoe Martinique a young woman who because of a trauma in her past is able to travel out of body. She makes a living doing industrial espionage in a uniquely ham-handed manner. She is aided by her friend Rhonda, who is a witch and her mother, who is psychic and runs a botanica that’s also a tea shop. (There are also two gay ghosts who apparently serve the purpose of being Sassy Gay Friends to Zoe, her mother and Rhonda.)

I'm probably being a little unfair, but I really didn't like the book.

Deadly Games is the third book in Lindsay Buroker's marvelous steampunk series The Emperor's Edge and quite frankly, I found it very, very difficult to write a review for this book without repeating everything I said about The Emperor's Edge series in my previous review.
It's as fast paced, as character driven with dry wit and humor as the other installments of the series, and - at least for me - even more gripping than the previous Dark Current (though that might be partially due to road stories not being my preferred brand of tea and the fact that the character developments from the previous books come to -partial, mind you!- fruition here (no, I will *not* tell you, how. Read for yourself!).

Forced to also mention the downsides, I can list only two:
First, the book is too short (its 110100+ words were over much too fast), and
Second, it ends on a cliffhanger (no, two cliffhangers actually: there's the emperor's note and the labyrinthine developments!) that makes me itch for what comes next. I truly hope we don't have to wait too long for Empire Edge's continuation.

Deadly Games is available as ebook via Smashwords and Amazon.