Seanan McGuire‘s A Red-Rose Chain has an ending problem; it’s both anti-climatic and rather abrupt. The journey up to that point is entertaining for the most part though, with the only hiccup being a bizarre page-and-a-half dialog regarding a character dramatically revealed to be transsexual. Why is there such a hamfisted focus on it? I don’t recall any particular attention being drawn to May’s lesbian relationship before, and this should have been no different.
As for Ilona Andrews‘ Magic Breaks and Magic Shifts: The first acts as a conclusion of sorts to the background conflict that has been building from the very first entry in the series, while the second continues on in a slightly different yet still quite similar direction. There’s a comforting familiarity about them that was absent from their more recent prequels.