Absinthe of Malice (Sinners, #5) by Rhys Ford Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Sinners #5
Pages: 200
Published by Dreamspinner Press on June 22nd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads
We’re getting the band back together.
Those five words send a chill down Miki St. John’s spine, especially when they’re spoken with a nearly religious fervor by his brother-in-all-but-blood, Damien Mitchell. However, those words were nothing compared to what Damien says next.
And we’re going on tour.
When Crossroads Gin hits the road, Damien hopes it will draw them closer together. There’s something magical about being on tour, especially when traveling in a van with no roadies, managers, or lovers to act as a buffer. The band is already close, but Damien knows they can be more—brothers of sorts, bound not only by familial ties but by their intense love for music.
As they travel from gig to gig, the band is haunted by past mistakes and personal demons, but they forge on. For Miki, Damie, Forest, and Rafe, the stage is where they all truly come alive, and the music they play is as important to them as the air they breathe.
But those demons and troubles won’t leave them alone, and with every mile under their belts, the band faces its greatest challenge—overcoming their deepest flaws and not killing one another along the way.
My Review:
I want to strangle the author. Except I really don’t. I loved this book. But…while the story is pretty much wrapped up at the end, a bombshell gets dropped on the last page that makes a terrible wait for the next book. Which means I can’t strangle the author, because then I’ll never find out what happened. Damn, a good plot ruined.
And there bloody well better be a next book. After THAT. Which I’m going to leave for readers to discover for themselves. Then we can share the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The Sinners series so far has been leading up to this. In the beginning, back in Sinner’s Gin, Miki St. John was all alone and drowning in his pain, both physical and emotional. As the story has progressed, Miki has been putting his life back together, along with putting a band back together.
That band, Crossroads Gin, is a mix of the old and the new. Damien, back from the dead and the wreck that killed Sinner’s Gin. Rafe and Forest are new, but have so many demons of their own that they fit right in.
In each book in the series so far, Sinner’s Gin, Whiskey and Wry, Tequila Mockingbird and Sloe Ride, the band has added a new player, the Murphy family has lost one wild child to the lure of loving a broken rock star, and the old Sinner’s Gin has become the new Crossroads Gin.
But in each book in the series, each man has battled his own internal demons, and at least one external demon has arrived on the scene in an attempt to snatch at their newfound happiness.
Now that there is a band, Absinthe of Malice moves the story into a new chapter. To see if they’ve really got what it takes to make great music, and to see if they can bond into something truly special in spite of the heavy baggage they all carry, they decide to carry some real baggage.
Crossroads Gin takes the band on the road, in a rented bus and with no roadies. They play dives and broken down clubs all across the U.S., with no one to rely on except each other, and their men back in San Francisco who drop everything at a moment’s notice whenever help, support or love is required. Or carpentry and electrical work.
And just as in every Sinners book, the band is dogged by a string of near tragedies. Fate does seem to be out to get them, but there is also someone or something who is trailing their every step, willing to stick in both a figurative and literal shiv whenever they think they might be getting it all together.
They start out wondering if they can survive each other on tour. They end up questioning whether they can survive at all.
Escape Rating B+: Compared to some of the other stories in the series, Absinthe of Malice has a few more slow spots. Also, there is no budding romance here to drive up the emotional tension. All the guys have found their true loves in the earlier books. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of lovely romantic moments, but there’s no chase. Everyone has already been caught.
This is a book where everyone who has been involved so far gets at least one terrific scene and a real chance to shine. And that includes the Murphy parents, Donal and Bridget, who each get their turn to finally make Miki see that he is every bit as much their son as the ones they gave birth to.
There’s also a fair bit of minutiae of a band traveling together and gelling into a unit,, along with a lot of rubbing each other very much the wrong way. Being cooped up in a single vehicle on boring roads for long stretches of time will do that to anyone.
But danger always dogs this bunch. If it wasn’t for all of them finding the loves of their lives, I would say that if it wasn’t for bad luck, they don’t have any at all.
The beginning of the tour closes with a knife attack. The perpetrator is never caught, but fear of that unknown follows along every mile of the tour. Either it’s Chekhov’s gun, which I doubt, or there is more nastiness to come in future books in the series.
Along with the aftershocks from that exploding bomb at the end.
