City of Night

Book two in Michelle West's House War series starts with Angel's quest to complete the mission of his exiled father, and then takes a sharp turn when he meets up with Jewel and her ""den""-a self-chosen tribe of street urchins, precocious by necessity. Angel all but fades into the background for the rest of the book while we follow Jewel's efforts to feed her adopted charges and keep them safe even as the undercity where they scavenge for saleable goods becomes a source of supernatural danger. Then Old Rath, Jewel's sometime-mentor, takes center stage with his mission to kill demons and to expose their infiltration of the ranks of the powerful-something he can do only by dying and allowing an impersonator to try to fool his estranged sister, now the head of a powerful clan. He pulls off a posthumous coup to protect Jewel and her visions. West's point-of-view shifts are vertiginous. No doubt over the course of the series all these threads will intertwine, but new readers are likely to be feel frustrated by all the loose ends left hanging in the meantime.