Welcome to the Salt Mine, a black ops agency that monitors and manages supernatural activity from its subterranean headquarters in the deep mineral mines of Detroit, Michigan, USA. When magic is real, someone has to keep it in check.
It’s not every day a firefight occurs in the garden of the American embassy in Beijing, and once the perpetrators are identified as Ivory Tower agents, the Salt Mine is on the phone. Leader dispatches Aaron Haddock–code name Stigma–to the scene and he finds it only gets weirder from there as clues lead him to an international smuggling ring and eventually out of the mortal world entirely.
Everything may be for sale in Duncith, the fabled Magh Meall city of rogues, including lives, but Stigma’s determined not to be on the auctioning block.
This is a novel in 3 movements, as in a musical score. At one point I feared the authors had felt too constricted by the UF constraints and had gone high fantasy. I get the innate porousness in the set up of the last 20 titles. It worked. The authors are in firm control. Meanwhile I'm back to the 1st title. I don't expect to reread the rest of what proceeded but I will most before Feb brings #22.