3.5 starsWeb of Lies is the second book in Jennifer Estep’s Elemental Assassins series. Our heroine Gin Blanco has now retired from her extremely lucrative career as The Spider and has now settled down working at her restaurant The Pork Pitt. Gin finds retirement a little boring. When the opportunity to help Fletcher’s old friend Warren Fox arises, Gin agrees to do the job. There are a lot of things to love about this series. The author builds an imaginative world where some people have the ability to control elements such as fire, ice, stone, air or a combination of some of the elements. The descriptions of the magic were intriguing. Gin’s elemental ice magic was handy for cooling drinks, creating lock picks, and ice knives. Her stone magic was useful as an alarm system among other things. I liked how the characters used magical runes to symbolize their abilities and distinguish themselves. This world also has giants, dwarfs, and vampires. The giants were huge imposing figures, the dwarfs stocky and strong, while the vampires were a little wimpy for my tastes. The cast of characters are great. Gin shines as an assassin trying to run a business in a very corrupt town. Gin is witty and thinks on her feet, she has confidence except when it comes to love. Her attraction to Donovan Caine drove me crazy. I couldn’t stand her mooning over this character. Donovan Caine behaved in a way that just did not jibe with his righteous and moral ways. I despised his character. I loved the characters close to Gin, namely Finn, Sophia and Jo-Jo. They are the closest thing Gin has to family. Finn was just an awesome character - I love Finn. There was a lot of repetition in this book. We are told that Donovan Caine smelled clean and soapy several times. The author uses “eyes” a little too much – “my gray eyes” appears in the text well over 20 times. There are also a lot of extraneous details that could have been left out, for example her description of a chicken salad sandwich was pretty much the recipe. A tighter edit would have made this book more readable.Despite these things, the story itself was good, with a lot of action and excitement. I will definitely continue to read this series. Check out my review on Badass Book Reviews