this book is lightning in a bottle, and one of my favorite urban fantasy books of all time. aside from a great plot and compelling characters, i want to highlight its great use of my favorite worldbuilding technique, "casual references to crazy things that happened off camera."

nothing has more power to make a world feel lived-in than revealing, for instance, a side character earned his stripes by squashing a defecting magician's pet iguana, or that first murders in the fictional organization of the

Checquy

occurred in the context of a bisexual love triangle gone murderous, or there is an off-camera character that channels the energy of every left-handed person in the world. the book is full of these great little asides that show that the incredibly weird events of the book aren't even that weird in the context of the universe these guys live in. that's great stuff.