THE LAST RAVEN

A man with superpowers hunts the people killing others of his kind in this series-launching urban fantasy novel.

Lucas Rurik is one of the riftborn. A tear between Earth’s dimension and another called the rift emanates energy that healed a great many people who were near death and granted them extraordinary abilities. Lucas, however, is unable to use his at the moment due to the fact that he hasn’t done so in months. While keeping a low profile in New York City, he gets news from his friend Isaac Gordon of the Rift-Crime Unit, where Lucas had once consulted. Evidently, “fiends” (animals touched by the rift’s energy) have slaughtered several RCU and FBI agents. Isaac asks Lucas to look into it, and he discovers that vicious creatures likely killed the agents under someone’s orders. This situation has ties to Lucas’ past; he’s the only surviving member of the ambushed Raven Guild—one of a handful of Guilds that hunted the most powerful people who are “rift-fused” like him. His investigation in New York stirs up terrible memories once it involves Dr. Callie Mitchell; Lucas witnessed firsthand her horrid experiments on rift-fused people at a prison-turned-asylum near Newfoundland. He fights to bring down the killers while keeping himself and his friends alive. McHugh packs this opening installment with plenty of exposition. There are, for example, extended scenes at the asylum and in the embers (a “personal pocket dimension” that riftborn can access to heal) along with glimpses of Lucas’ delightfully complex history. This has the effect of sidelining the easily resolved murder mystery, but the novel still delivers unpredictable turns as well as a full-bodied cast of likable allies and savage villains. These include several different kinds of revenants, who are akin to riftborn but were dead before the rift’s power revived them; one can grow “huge spines all over his body and [use] them for both defensive and offensive purposes.” McHugh’s pithy prose energizes the narrative, even when there’s no superpower on display, and builds intrigue with gradual reveals of Lucas’ rift-derived skills and backstory.

This slick introductory supernatural tale will leave readers eager for a sequel.