I've read really a lot of the Elemental Masters books at this point and boy are they hit or miss. The fairy tale element is essentially non-relevant in this one, which is a shame. More crucially, the pacing is abysmal. It takes half the book for the plot to arrive, before that it's just faffing around playing dress-up.

There are interesting ideas - Rosa is initially prejudiced against her love interest Markos because he's a werewolf, but that idea just doesn't go anywhere because she immediately overcomes her prejudice because he's different than all those other shifters. It leaves an uncomfortable taste in my mouth because the implication is that a lot of werewolves are werewolves involuntarily, but all of them are evil except this guy because he's born with it. It's, uh, iffy.

The main plot is also an interesting idea that goes nowhere, because of the shitty pacing. If the beginnings of the plot were introduced earlier, or more accurately, if Rosa didn't go into a plot cul-de-sac in Munich for a hundred pages and the mystery was actually a mystery as opposed to something she immediately intuits because she's always right and perfect at everything it would be better. So far, Home From the Sea is the highlight of this series and Lackey has yet to reach those highs again...