 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about the third book in the Charlie Parker series, John Connolly's The Killing Kind. Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna start doing this because I've gotten a lot of comments throughout the years, what, two years? I've been here two years. Anyways, I've gotten a lot of comments over the months. I'm already giggling. Uh-oh. But I've gotten a lot of comments to say, hey, you never talk about what the book is about. You only talk about what you like. I am a firm believer that if you want to know what a book is about, you got to do is check out the description. And anything beyond that I feel is spoiler territory, so I kind of stay away from it. But I am going to read the back cover copy on this. So, when the discovery of a mass grave in northern Maine reveals the grim truth behind the disappearance of a religious community, Charlie Parker is drawn in a vicious conflict with a group of zealots intent on tracking down a relic that could link them to the slaughter. Haunted by the ghost of a small boy and tormented by the demonic killer known as Mr. Pud, Parker is forced to fight for his lover, his friends, and his very soul. All right, um, so let's talk about Mr. Pud just really, really quick. Mr. Pud preceded himself. I guess that's the way. He had a reputation long before I ever really got into this series. One of the very first things that I heard about when I heard about the Charlie Parker series about John Connolly was Mr. Pud. Everybody, even on Twitter, if I guess I could dig around for it, but Keelan Patrick Burt popped up and said Mr. Pud is terrifying. All throughout my book community, not career, but my time in the book community on Goodreads, I have heard about Mr. Pud. I think I even heard about Mr. Pud before I even realized that he was a character in a book. The name always struck me funny. Pud? It just doesn't sound creepy, but holy shit. This is one character that is going to stay with me for a while, and Connolly did a terrific job describing this character's fingers. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to go into any more detail about him because I had no idea. No one told me what Mr. Pud's MO was. Nobody told me what that was, and when I got in here, I had to put the book down. The prologue made me put the book down. It bothered me a lot, and if you get in there, it's one of two of my greatest fears. I have two fears, and it is tied with the other one. So if you know me personally, you can probably puzzle that out yourself. The book itself, this one stands alone a lot less than book one and book two. Book two didn't really harken back to book one all that much, but this one certainly does. Once again, I'm already halfway through the next book in the series, so I'm going to go ahead and say, this is not a standalone series whatsoever, especially not when you, by the time you get the book four. I don't know who in their right mind would have told me that the books could be read as stand-alones. I guess some people were just trying to help me out because at the time I only had books 16 and 17 in the series in my possession. I now am only missing three of them just in the past month. I've went out and grabbed them because I'm going through these books one a week. I know I didn't post any Connolly reviews last week, but that's because I had so much to get out. I had what was it, David Joy. I had Shirley Jackson. I had a bunch of stuff to get out, and I only have three days for review, and I take the weekends off. I'm trying to give myself that break. But with this one, this is my favorite in the series so far. It's really hard, as quickly as I'm reading this, it's really hard not to talk about what I'm reading right now. But looking back in this one, this book had a great effect on me. I think, but I honestly believe that I could have skipped right over book two and not hurt my chances of understanding the series. The only thing I could say is the same thing I said in the Dark Hollow review was it felt like a sophomore effort. It felt like a second book in the series, and that's perfect. What this one does, this does not feel like the third book in a series. This feels like the series has just gained its ground. It has finally decided what it's going to be. It's leaving, you know, other possibilities of where it might have gone in its dust, and it is veering off into a place that I certainly definitely want to see the outcome of. And I'm saying this as someone, like I said, who is halfway through book four, and will probably be halfway through book five by the time I talk about book four. But it's also a testament to how good this series is, how I'm burning through it. I read this one in three or four days. I read the first one in three days, the second one in four days. This one, I think three or four days. I'm not exactly sure. I did take, I think, two days off right in the middle of it after reading the prologue. I know, I know, I just, I was triggered. I was honestly, I know that word gets thrown around a lot, but that it triggered and it took a lot for me to read some other scenes in the book. But another thing, going back to it, Angel and Lewis are fantastic. I had, I have quotes, sorry, quotes back here that just say dialogue. And I wanted to read them to you. I wanted to get into it. And I want to be like, I want, even planning on doing like a little skit going back and forth between Angel and Lewis. But I want to spoil these things for you. So, but just know, if you find a mass market paperback copy of this book, the dialogue that I'm talking about is on pages 162. It's hilarious. These two characters are amazing when they're talking to Charlie, just when they're talking in general. And page 251. I am hyped, extremely hyped to get to book seven in the series, which is called The Reapers. It is a book, from what I understand, it is a book set that, especially, I can't talk today. It is a book, especially from Angel and Lewis' point of views. I want to get to that book very, very soon, which is another reason why I'm burning through it. I burned through the first two to get to this one because it had such a high reputation. And it did not let me down. So yeah, this is my favorite in the series right now. Have you read The Killing Kind by John Connolly? If you have, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.