Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
However, reviewing the book Shadows Before The Sun (Charlie Madigan), By Kelly Gay in this site will certainly lead you not to bring the printed publication all over you go. Merely save the book in MMC or computer disk as well as they are available to read at any time. The thriving system by reading this soft documents of the Shadows Before The Sun (Charlie Madigan), By Kelly Gay can be introduced something new practice. So currently, this is time to prove if reading could boost your life or otherwise. Make Shadows Before The Sun (Charlie Madigan), By Kelly Gay it certainly work as well as obtain all advantages.
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Download Ebook PDF Online Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
The electrifying sequel to the acclaimed urban fantasies The Better Part of Darkness, The Darkest Edge of Dawn, and The Hour of Dust and Ashes!Between life and death lies a chasm of pain beyond imagining. . . . Elysia may be a heavenly off-world destination, but beyond it, in the siren city of Fiallan, the Circe have punished Charlie Madigan’s partner, Hank, into a torturous state between life and death. With all the proper legal channels cleared, Charlie heads to Elysia, not knowing what she’ll find, or if she’ll ever see the siren again . . . while at home, jinn crime boss Grigori Tennin has begun an all-out hunt for the divine being Ahkneri. Tennin’s tactics set off a chain reaction that puts Charlie in the crosshairs of the shadowy creature known as Death, and stirs Ahkneri from her long sleep—and if Vengeance awakes, Atlanta will never be the same.
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay - Amazon Sales Rank: #1820658 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-24
- Released on: 2015-10-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.00" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay About the Author Kelly Gay is the author of the Pocket Books urban fantasy series featuring Charlie Madigan, which include The Better Part of Darkness, The Darkest Edge of Dawn, The Hour of Dust and Ashes, and Shadows Before the Sun. She is a two-time RITA Award finalist, a 2010 finalist for Best First Book from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, and a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council fellowship grant in literature. She also writes as Kelly Keaton.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1“I’m serious, Charlie. I think I’m becoming telepathic.” “Telepathetic is more like it,” I muttered. Rex’s tone went flat. “Funny.” I slowed my vehicle to a stop at the light, and then took a sip of coffee, meeting Rex’s dark, sleep-deprived scowl over the rim of the cup. He was unshaven and needed a haircut. And, yeah, he might be the biggest goofball I’d ever met, but now that he knew who he was and where he came from, he’d become edgier and fiercer than before when he was simply a Revenant occupying the body of my ex-husband, Will. “What?” He stared at me with one eyebrow cocked. “Nothing.” I looked out my side window for a second and then back at him. “Your eyes are different.” “Noticed that, did you?” “Hard not to,” I admitted. Will Garrity’s gorgeous gray-blue eyes that had always put me in mind of stormy skies were now changed—once I’d pulled his soul from his body, releasing him to find peace as he’d asked, it had allowed Rex’s jinn spirit to lay claim, to knit itself into Will’s physical form in a way that was beyond possession, in a way that was permanent and complete. As a result, small jinn signatures began to manifest, changing things on the inside and the outside. The gray-blue color of Will’s eyes was still there, but now it was shaded in the violet indicative of the jinn race, turning them into a strange but beautiful lavender shade. “I look like a fucking girl,” Rex grumbled as I accelerated through the intersection. Somebody shoot me. From the time Rex had gotten into the passenger seat, I’d had to listen to him detail every ache and pain, his every claim and suspicion about what he thought was taking place inside of him. “You don’t look like a girl,” I said. “Your eyes are . . . pretty.” Which I knew would set him off, but I had a certain payback quota to fill when it came to Rex. His finger punched the air. “Exactly! Pretty. Not masculine. Not dark and mysterious. Fucking pretty.” “Oh please. Women love guys with beautiful eyes. Trust me. I think you’re good.” He thought about it for a moment, calculating. “How good, exactly?” I laughed and saw he was grinning. Will had a smile so warm it could melt snow and in Rex’s possession . . . well, the female population of Atlanta was in for a treat if Rex decided to start prowling. “You shouldn’t fish for compliments, you know,” I said, parking along the curb and then cutting the engine. “It kind of breaks the whole thing you got going on with the scruff and the leather jacket.” Rex might look good on the outside, but inside he was a contradiction convention. Arrogant, yet unsure. Extremely intelligent, yet would veg out in front of Nick Jr. like a four year old. A warrior at heart who walked around the kitchen in a cherry print apron reciting Shakespeare sonnets. He had a devil-may-care attitude that came from thousands of years as a spirit, one who couldn’t be killed, one who had seen it all and done it all within host after host of willing bodies. Until he fell in with the Madigan clan. Until he met my daughter and felt the stirrings of the one thing he hadn’t done in life: be a father. Part of a family. We got out and proceeded down the sidewalk, which ran alongside the tall fence surrounding the Grove. I ducked my shoulders against the light mist of rain and silently cursed the weather. The off-world darkness I’d summoned months ago still churned above Atlanta like a living shroud, but the rain was even worse. It carried some of the darkness to the ground, creating a thin off-world fog and causing my Charbydon genes to go haywire from all the raw arcane energy in the air. Ahead, ITF cruisers blocked the 10th Street entrance to the Grove and two officers stood nearby talking. I’d been one of them once, proudly wearing the Integration Task Force uniform and dealing with the influx of beings from the dimensions of Elysia and Charbydon. Eventually, I’d moved on to detective, where I dealt with crime in the off-world communities in and around Atlanta, usually in Underground, the biggest off-world neighborhood in the city. But those days, like everything else, seemed like a lifetime away, when I’d been human, when I had an identity I was sure of. I supposed in a way, Rex and I were both having our own identity crisis. We were just approaching it differently. Rex bumped me with his shoulder then lifted his chin a notch so I could get a good, clean look at him. “So besides the eyes, do I seem different to you? Like on a sensory level?” Yeah, totally different approaches. It wasn’t even nine o’clock and Rex was already getting under my skin. “For the hundredth time, no.” “Well, I feel different.” “No shit, Rex,” I finally said, exasperated. “You’ve been floating around for thousands of years as a Revenant, occupying one body after another. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Now you have a body all your own and it’s bound to feel different for a while. Look, you’ll get used to it.” I took another sip from my paper cup. “You kind of have to, since you’re stuck with it.” He rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks. Promise me you won’t accept any speaking engagements, or start counseling, or writing self-help books. Really. Stick to killing things because your motivational skills suck ass.” I shrugged. “We each have our talents.” And I was perfectly fine at giving pep talks when the situation called for them, and this one didn’t. I wasn’t about to feed Rex’s imagination. “But I’ve always thought about writing a book one day . . . maybe something like How to Deal with Overemotional, Highly Delusional Revenants or maybe I’ll just shorten it to Revenants for Dummies.” Rex gave a humorless laugh. “No, yours would be Don’t Let Life Get You Down, Let Charlie Do It Instead.” I shot him an eye roll, unclipped the badge from my belt, and flashed my credentials at one of the two uniformed officers standing before the open gate. Somewhere beyond that gate in the home of the Kinfolk, the city’s largest population of nymphs, was a dead body. As we stepped around the officers and into the Grove, unease slid down my back. Gone were the concrete paths, the benches, the water fountains, and the public restrooms that existed here years ago when this was Piedmont Park. In their place was an ancient forest, thick and dark—spurred into old growth by the nymphs’ magic. The forest of the Grove was dark even on the sunniest day, but now, beneath a cover of living darkness, it took on a sinister feel. And when the nymphs said stay on the path, don’t stray from the path, one tended to listen. Torches lined the path that cut through the forest from the gate all the way to the shores of Clara Meer Lake and the nymphs’ colossal wooden temple. The only things that kept me from feeling like I’d just stepped back in time by a few thousand years were the skyscrapers and city lights surrounding the park. “This is . . . rural,” Rex said as we kept to the path. “The nymphs’ private playground.” The only beings born with the power to shift into an animal form—without the use of spells and crafting—the park gave the nymphs ample room to run and play and hunt. “They built their own Stonehenge on the hill there,” I said, gesturing to Oak Hill. Rex stared at it for a few steps. “Looks creepy as hell.” “It’s even creepier when it’s being used.” The stones sat silent for now, ghostly monoliths that could pulse with power so strong and deep it had once made me momentarily deaf and extremely nauseous. “You know I’m changing, Charlie, or I wouldn’t be here to help with the investigation,” Rex said at length. “I know, Rex. But you’re just regaining some of your old jinn traits. You’re not developing powers beyond what a jinn is naturally capable of. And telepathy is not a jinn trait. I brought you with me because of what a jinn can naturally do.” “I can only tell you if I sense a jinn presence at the crime scene, so I’m not sure how much that’s going to help.” “It’ll help a lot. It’ll rule them out. The only eyewitness says he saw a large gray-skinned being near the lake.” And since the jinn had skin that ran the spectrum of medium gray to dark gray, and were built like linebackers, they were the first to come to mind, unfortunately. There was also the darkling fae, but they were thin, sinewy beings and definitely didn’t fit into the “large” category. But a jinn? That spelled all sorts of trouble. Nymphs were from Elysia. Jinn were from Charbydon. They weren’t known for being friendly since the beings of “heaven” and “hell” had continually warred for eons. Here in Atlanta, the ITF and local representatives from all the races made sure peace was maintained and treaty laws adhered to—a sort of neutral ground for all beings. But none of that stopped years of bias and hate. And when it came to the boss of the local jinn tribe, Grigori Tennin, and the nymphs’ Druid King . . . well, those two made fire and water look like friends. So, yeah, a jinn here in nymph territory? Not good. A jinn murdering a nymph within said territory? Monumentally bad. Not to mention the highly disturbing suspicion that if a jinn was really here, he or she might’ve been in the Grove for a very specific purpose. And the subject of that “purpose” was already whispering a welcome in my mind. The soft, feminine tone flowed through my mind, relaxing some of the tension in my shoulders. Ahkneri’s words were usually too distant to understand, and they were brushed with a sadness that made me ache. I had a strange connection with the divine being hidden beneath the lake—weird dreams, the ability to sometimes sense her emotions, understand her language. The First Ones were supposed to be a myth and to most people they were. But to some, like Grigori Tennin and the Sons of Dawn cult, she was their ticket to starting a three-world war. He’d stop at nothing to find her. The First Ones were the ancestors to humans, Elysian Adonai, and the Charbydon nobles. Their existence would prove to the worlds that the nobles were related to the Adonai, and that they were indeed cast out of Elysia in the forgotten past. If the nobles were to learn the truth, they’d launch an all-out war against the Adonai to take back their true homeland. It would leave the jinn in charge of Charbydon, free from noble oppression, and Earth in the middle of a war we’d no doubt get sucked into. For the sake of all three worlds, Ahkneri had to stay hidden. If Rex said there was no jinn signature anywhere near the body, one crisis averted. If not, I didn’t even want to think about it, especially since I was supposed to be leaving for Elysia and the siren city of Fiallan tomorrow. As we drew closer to the colossal wooden structure rising up through the trees, the temperature dropped slightly and the air became cooler and scented with lake water. Rex whistled in appreciation, his steps slowing as he ogled the nymphs’ temple with its huge wooden columns the size of California redwoods. I kept moving, going through the structure, the main courtyard, and to the dock that stretched out over the lake. Liz and her crew were already on the shoreline near the dock. “The chief fill you in?” she asked as I approached. “A little while ago. I hear we have a body in the lake and one highly uncooperative Druid King.” The ITF’s lead medical examiner and gifted necromancer snorted at that. “Highly uncooperative is being nice.” She glared at the figure at the end of the dock through horn-rimmed eyeglasses. “Careful,” I said, smiling. “You keep shooting eye missiles at him like that you’re going to melt your lenses.” Liz frowned, and then shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “He irks me.” “I noticed. If it makes you feel any better, he does that to everyone. Here, hold this.” I handed her my coffee cup, which she took but didn’t know what the hell to do with, and said, “Wish me luck.” My boots echoed on the wooden planks as I approached the Kinfolk’s spiritual leader, enforcer, protector, and all-around badass. And those titles were more than accurate to describe Pendaran. He stood at the end of the dock, alone, hands tucked into his pants pockets, a white T-shirt stretching over his broad back, and his black hair just touching the collar. His focus was on the scene in the lake as two search-and-rescue officers in a dinghy pulled a corpse to shore. Liz hurried closer to the waterline. A soundless flash of green in the undulating gray mass above us illuminated the dark water and its corpse for a split second. I felt for the nymphs. The Grove was a sanctuary, a home with defined borders patrolled day and night. One of their own had been killed within those borders. And as far as I knew, that had never happened before. I walked into a thick wave of rage, strong enough to knock the unprepared back a few steps. But I expected Pen’s wrath. I stopped next to him at the end of the dock, watching the scene unfold for a moment, letting him get used to my presence. “I’m sorry for your loss, Pen. The chief said you have an eyewitness?” At first he didn’t reply. He continued to stare at the scene, his profile hard as granite. The winding Celtic-style tattoo, which I knew to encompass the entire left side of his body—toes to hand to temple—was stark against the exposed skin; pale not from fear, but from blinding rage. I went to repeat the question, but he turned. And didn’t even spare me a glance because his gaze zeroed in on Rex like predator to prey. Oh shit. It dawned on me then what a huge mistake I’d made. Of course Pen would know, would sense that despite the human figure walking down the dock, it was a jinn coming toward us. I stepped in front of the Druid King. Probably not the wisest of moves, but I didn’t really have a choice. My hand eased back my jacket to rest on the grip of my right sidearm. “Stop, Pen,” I warned. “Don’t do it.” His nostrils flared. A shimmer of abalone color filtered over Pen’s irises, the same color I knew was on the underside of his enormous black wings. If Pen turned dragon and went after what he saw as a jinn coming toward him, we were screwed. The Druid had nearly declared war on Grigori Tennin and the jinn when Daya, one of his Kinfolk, had died, caught up as she was in Tennin’s plan to reveal Ahkneri to the world. Now Pen believed a jinn had invaded his territory and killed another one of his kin. And to add insult to injury, a jinn was coming down the dock. Pen’s features had turned from harsh to downright homicidal. My vision went cloudy. Heart pounding, I did everything I could to prevent my own power from rising in response. “He’s with me. He’s here to tell us if your eyewitness really saw a jinn. Rex was a Revenant, Pen. He hasn’t been a jinn for thousands of years. He doesn’t act like them or even think like them. He watches cartoons, for Chrissakes . . .” But Pen wasn’t listening, and Rex had stopped still, like a mouse caught in the gaze of a cobra. “He lives in my house,” I went on. “He’s in the body of my ex-husband and my kid loves him. I swear to God if you go after him,” I promised with a conviction that came from the depths of my soul, “I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you.” No one moved for the longest time, which was good because I needed everything I had to keep a lid on my power as Pen struggled to regain control, his dragon and his grief warring with his own good sense. He looked down at my hand pressed flatly and firmly against his chest. I hadn’t even realized he’d moved forward or that I had touched him. My other hand was still wrapped around the grip of my gun. A raven eyebrow arched. The alpha, the ruler, in him would never move back, so I dropped both hands and took one step back. “Keep him away from me,” he snarled in a deep voice brimming with power. Crisis averted. I let out a shaky breath. “Okay. No problem. I can do that.” I walked back to Rex on shaky legs. “Go to the courtyard and wait for me there.” A muscle in Rex’s jaw flexed. He leaned forward. “What an ungrateful piece of work. Why should I help him when all he wants to do is tear me apart?” “Keep your voice down. One of his kin just died. God, Rex. He thinks a jinn is responsible. You do the math. Just go wait and I’ll come get you when I’m done, okay?” He tossed an evil look at Pen’s back and marched away, muttering about staying in bed and demented, homicidal nymphs.
Where to Download Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Most helpful customer reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Brilliant Urban Fantasy series By Claire's Book Corner You know when you read a really great book and you just know that other people will like it too and you want to shout as loud as you can READ THIS SERIES....well this is one of those books. If you like Urban Fantasy please take the time to check out the first book in this series The Better Part Of Darkness you won't regret it I promise.The Charlie Madigan series is Urban Fantasy but it doesn't contain vampires, were's or Fae. It is unique in that there are two different worlds Elysia and Charbydon which exist in another dimension. Charlie is a cop who polices the beings from these two worlds who come to Earth to visit and live. Charlie has seen her fair share of trouble. In the first book she is brought back to life when she is injected with the DNA from beings from both heaven like Elysia and hell like Charbydon. We are now discovering that Charlie is getting powers which she doesn't understand or know how to use yet. In the last book The Hour Of Dust And Ashes her Siren cop partner and possible lover Hank was arrested and taken back home to Elysia as a traitor for his desertion some 200 years earlier. Shadows Before The Sun picks up with Charlie travelling to Elysia to find and rescue Hank and to bring him back home.It has been a long year waiting for this book to be released. The last book had such a massive cliffhanger with Hank being carted away back to Elysia, I was desperate for this book and it did not disappoint me what so ever. All four books in the series are consistently well written, Ms Gay never fails to deliver a first class book. The stories are thrilling, enthralling and a fascinating read and they read a bit more mature than some other UF books. There are some awesome characters in these books from the sexy Siren Hank, to her possessed ex husband Rex but it is Charlie who is my favourite. Charlie is a great character she is a kickass cop who also has a softer more vulnerable side as that of a divorced mum with her daughter. The world building is excellent and quite different to other UF series where Ms Gay creates two worlds with both Elysia and Charbydon. They are literally worlds apart and there is a fair bit of imagination used with how the worlds exist and how we travel to them.If you have read this series before you will not be disappointed with this book. My only problem was that the ending could read like the end of the series however news on Ms Gay's website does not say that is the end of Charlie however Ms Gay does confirm that this was the last book of her current contract. Please please please can we have more Charlie I'm not ready to give this series up yet. Shadows Before The Sun was magnificent and I am going to give it 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Loved it - but the pacing was a bit off By Dantine I'm a huge fan of this series. I pre-ordered this book months in advance and have been eagerly awaiting the answers to many of the questions raised in the previous book (The Hour of Dust and Ashes). I read the entire thing in one sitting. Still, I have to wonder - how much of my enjoyment of this book comes from my love of the characters and the universe, versus the actual quality of the book overall?First and foremost, something new! We see occasional bits and pieces from Hank's perspective. I both liked this, and disliked it. It left me feeling inconsistent, particularly because I felt Hank's personal journey in the book was a bit too fast - (mini SPOILER incoming!) especially his quick recovery - it was unreasonably so for what many described as an unrecoverable event, particularly with a nice plot device of divine intervention to help tie up that loose end to enable some romance (which I have been dying to see since book 2). Ultimately, I just felt like the payoff wasn't as satisfying as it could be.My other main point of contention is that two major plot points are both resolved in this book, but not in a way that it seems as if it was seamlessly entwined. Rather, it was more like plot 1 - done! Now, onto plot 2 - okay, done, now let's set up for book 5. While I devoured every word and was utterly riveted at the things that happened, the pacing was just...really off. I'd have preferred two separate books with more fleshed out bits and pieces than to the combination.I still liked this book a lot, but it's certainly not my favorite in the series - and I'm still eagerly awaiting the next. :)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Intense! By BookFever There's only one word to describe this book, and that is: Intense!From start to finish, Shadows before the Sun was action-packed, and my eyes were glued to the pages in eager anticipation of Charlie's and Hank's reunion in Elysia, which I knew would happen, but the question was 'how' and 'how would Hank's ordeal affect him and his relationship with Charlie after everything was all set and done'?At the end of the third installment, Hank, Charlie's siren partner, was dragged back to Elysia, the "lighter" off-world, to face punishment for abandoning his role as Malakim, protector of the city of Fillian. I anticipated that his punishment by the ancient Circe, the creators of the Malakim towers, would be severe, but I did not expect author Kelly Gay's new plot device to let a reader know just how brutal the Circe can be.Throughout several chapters of the book, a reader gets glimpses of Hank's ordeal by snippets written in third-person POV, and it undoubtedly creates an urgency that drives the plot along.Unfortunately, the same urgency can't be sensed from Charlie, so I often felt myself thinking, "Hurry up already!"In addition, Kelly Gay introduces several minor sub-plots, which serve to set the stage for a fifth installment I presume, but Shadows Before the Sun ends in such a way that a reader would not suffer if a fifth book were never written. It ends with a sense of finality, which I found a bit saddening, but satisfying at the same time.All the major loose ends are tied up, which means there's a lot of content to digest, and the history and mythology behind the Elysians/Charbydons was a little overwhelming to say the least.The chapters flow from one major event to another, and it makes me wonder if the author intended this to be the final book (although she stated on her website that it hadn't been decided).This is a five star series all the way!
See all 40 customer reviews...
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay PDF
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay iBooks
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay ePub
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay rtf
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay AZW
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay Kindle
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
Shadows Before the Sun (Charlie Madigan), by Kelly Gay
