‘Fortune’s Ashes‘, the seventh ‘Firebrand‘ book, brings this entertaining series to a very satisfactory close. I swallowed the first three of these books, which were all published in 2020, our Lockdown year, in one happy gulp. I loved the idea of the Super Squad policing the supernatural inhabitants of London and I enjoyed watching Emma Bellamy overcome her disappointment at being pushed sideways into the Squad when she was ready for promotion elsewhere and become absorbed in this world of Werewolf Clans, Goblins, Pixies, Satyrs and Vampires as she tried to solve a murder.

I was fascinated as she discovered her own, rather strange supernatural power as a Phoenix who rises from the dead twelve hours after being killed and built her relationship with the Super community, her colleagues in the Super Squad and her romance with the inevitably handsome and charismatic Vampire Lord.

I thought the fifth book, ‘Dark Whispers‘ (2021) wobbled a bit. It was still fun but seemed less sure-footed than its predecessors and I wondered if the series had run its course. Then Helen Harper brought everything back on track with the sixth book, ‘A Killer’s Kiss‘ which had a decent mystery at its heart and seemed to set Emma up for her Happy Every After until she discovered that she’d been contaminated with a new power that made her life more difficult.

‘Fortune’s Ashes’ picked up from where the last book left off. Emma’s relationship with her Vampire Lord is on hold. She can’t bring herself to accept his proposal now that she’s become a Cassandra, a person who gets random and often very inconvenient glimpses of the future. She knows it’s a power her lover disapproves of and can’t see a way forward.

From that point on, Helen Harper piles on the problems, effectively tearing Emma’s life apart, putting the people she cares about at risk, destroying her reputation and setting her up to be charged with murder. There’s an entertaining plot here that kept me guessing at who was targeting Emma and why. From time to time, it seemed to me that she should have been more suspicious of the people around her, she is a police detective after all, but she had a lot going on and I was having fun, so I let it pass.

I really enjoyed the way Helen Harper resolved Emma’s problems. It was clever and emotionally satisfying and formed the perfect point to bring the series to a close.

If you haven’t read any of these yet, do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy of ‘Brimstone Bound’ and let yourself sink into Emma’s world for seven entertaining books.