Please note Raising Fire is a direct sequel to Chasing Embers and it is entirely possible the following review will contain some minor spoilers if you have not read the first book in the series. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ben Garston has broken the Lore. Now it’s time to face the music. Life isn’t treating Red Ben well. He’s lost everything he held dear, including the love of his life. Still, at least he escaped the clutches of a malevolent spirit bent on total destruction. So there is that. Now Ben just wants to drink, and forget, and drink some more. But he can’t. Not yet. Because someone is stirring up trouble. Someone who wants to unleash a powerful ancient magic that could bring the realm of mythology crashing into the modern world. If Ben fails to stop them, the world will burn — and that’s the last thing he needs on his conscience. In 2016 I really enjoyed James Bennett’s first novel, Chasing Embers. So much so, I voted it my debut novel of the year. Nearly twelve months have passed and the sequel, Raising Fire, has now been released. Red Ben Garston is one of the…

There’s nothing special about Ben Garston. He’s just a guy with an attitude in a beat-up leather jacket, drowning his sorrows in a downtown bar. Or so he’d have you believe. What Ben Garston can’t let you know is that he was once known as Red Ben. That the world of myth and legend isn’t just a fantasy, as we’ve been led to believe. And he certainly can’t let you know the secret of what’s hiding just beneath his skin… But not even Ben knows what kind of hell is about to break loose. A centuries-old rivalry has just resurfaced, and the delicate balance between his world and ours is about to be shattered. I love that moment when a book clicks. When you’re reading an author’s work for the first time, and suddenly you just get it. There is always the little frisson of panic whenever an author is an unknown quantity. Will I enjoy their work or will it be for someone else and not for me?  Within a handful of pages I knew without question that James Bennett was going to be an author whose work I was going to enjoy. ‘Red’ Ben Garston is a complicated…