Diana Rowland's Legacy of the Demon is the Eight installment in the authors Kara Gillian series. Legacy of the Demon fills in the missing gaps and open questions from the previous books and continues to build on the complex world Dianna created. So, timeline wise, we are looking at (2) months from the ending of Vengeance of the Demon. Demons have been coming through the rifts ever since the arcane valve explosion at the Beaulac Police Department, and Kara has become a member of DIRT (Demonic Incursion Retaliation and Tactics) as well as Arcane Commander along with Vince Pellini, arcane specialist.

It is now a new world order where the higher ups want Kara and DIRT to capture as many demons as possible, especially Reyza's. Kara's arcane skills are still frizzing since being ambushed. Everyone knows her connections to the realm and what she's about, so she has the edge when ridges start opening over the world and Earth starts going to literal hell. She even talks to the president at some point, although the reader just gets the one-sided phone call gist of the conversation.

On the home front, Kara’s home has become an armed compound where she has the latest gadgets and a security force, best friend Jill Faciane is not happy that her newborn daughter Ashava suddenly flew away and disappeared with Zach, Sonny, and Ryan. (No spoilers but all 4 make an appearance later in the story.) Rhyzkahl is still contained in the backyard, Mzatal and other demons are fighting a war they are close to losing, and a rash of humans are suddenly finding themselves transformed after coming out of a jelly like cocoon. Add an enemy from the Core who may be more dangerous than any Demon Lord, and it’s just another day of work for Kara and her allies.

It is fair to say that this series has moved far, far away from the police procedural facet which make Kara a different sort of character than others. An awful lot happens in this book. The action is nearly non-stop. Readers get a much greater understanding of the demon realm and just how almost dependent on each other the two worlds are. We find out a lot more about the Elinor Bayliss/Szerian/Giovanni story and it was pretty shocking to learn that Rhyzkahl isn't as bad as you thought he was. In fact, one might say that Kara and Rhyz have a moment where all the anger she has built up because of what he did to her, is finally time to let it go and deal with more dangerous threats.

This book released in 2016 and yes, I have decided that I am going to try to clean up my large pile of to be read books while also moving forward slowly into 2021 releases. Unfortunately, it now appears that the final installment in this series has been delayed from 2020 to TBA due to a variety of reasons. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another 4 years for Rise of the Demon.

All I can say is holy.crap! I did not see these events unfolding and I'm hoping there's more!

The Kara Gillian series has been one of my long running favorite urban fantasy series. So much has happened since the beginning of the series it’s truly amazing when you think about it. Unfortunately, however, this latest installment was missing a lot of the spark that keeps me coming back to this series. From the start, we’re thrown into the middle of things with no explanations of the massive changes from the previous installment. Granted, it’s been a while since I read the last book, but I had to stop reading to make sure I hadn’t missed a book in between. It was simply that confusing, and jumps ahead in the timeline that much. The book just had a different feel about it, almost as if trying to return to the much less powerful Kara days, but unfortunately, it just didn’t work for me. It just felt wrong to make her weak for the sake of being weak. That may what was intended by the author, but it's how it felt to me, and just soured things. But onto the good side of that, Kara is fully owning her new weakness and through it found strength and new ways of doing things/getting the job done

Getting past Kara, and onto the book itself... So much happened in this book, I mean so much to the point of almost frenzy. Sure a lot, and I do mean a lot of unanswered questions from the entire series did seem to culminate in this book, but frankly it was just too much. I would have preferred just a bit less, and considering just how long the book was, removing some of the deluge wouldn't have been an issue. That being said, it's just my opinion, and others might like just how frenetic and jam packed this book is, but it just didn't work for me.

I bounced back and forth between a two and a three while deciding what to rate this book, but in the end I'm going to go with a three. When it's all said and done, the book more than kept my attention and I didn't find myself wanting to put it down, so I just can't justify a 2 star when it's all said and done that I was entertained throughout despite my frustrations. In the end I'm going to chalk this one up to being a bumpy installment and I still look forward to the next in this much loved series.