Deal with the Devil

"Deal with the Devil" by Kit Rocha is a lovely addition to the sci-fi/romance genre. Their tag line description is "Orphan Black meets the postapocalyptic Avengers."

It doesn't focus as much on the mercenary librarian aspect as I'd hoped, but I did get to read the phrase "Rogue Library of Congress bunker", and the idea of that still makes me smile.

This is book 1 in the Mercenary Librarian series, and I am excited for the next one. "Deal with the Devil" tells its own story, focusing on developing the main characters, and slowly builds the foundation and understanding of the bigger powers at play in their world. The very last chapter leaves you with less of a cliffhanger and more of a dun dun duuunn... to lead you in to the next book. And it seems like each subsequent book will focus on a different romantic pair from our core group of characters.

Style wise, something I found fairly unique and really enjoyed was that the chapters are separated by internal memos from those bigger powers. In this book, at least, they are memos from our characters' pasts, and you can piece together their histories as you read about how they navigate their present. I like it as a world building technique, and it adds to your reread because the memos in the beginning of the book have deeper meaning when you have a deeper understanding of the characters.