Wolves and the River of Stone is the second book in Eric R. Asher's Vesik series. It's urban fantasy.
Review:
This is one of my Book Bonanza 2019 purchases. I read it way back in 2019 and should have reviewed it back then, but didn't - I was in the midst of a very long reviewing slump, so there were a lot of things I finished but never reviewed. My intention was to reread it and review it properly before offloading it, but I've found that I have zero desire to reread it, and I couldn't even get through the audio version (partly due to my dislike of the narrator - I know Asher loves him, he said so in a BB19 panel, but something about his voice makes every line he says sound like he takes nothing seriously, which makes me dislike Damian even more than I already do). So I'll just do the best I can with what I remember, which isn't much.
In this particular book, Zola, Damian's mentor, has been kidnapped by Philip, her former lover, so of course Damian has to try to free her and deal with Philip and his demons. Werewolves are added to the mix, as is a love interest for Damian.
I'd initially wondered if Asher had planned to pair Damian up with Ashley, the Wiccan priestess who shared his morbid and gross sense of humor, but instead Asher paired Damian up with Nixie, the water witch I'd barely paid any attention to in the first book. Damian's drooling over Nixie was so over-the-top that I spent a good chunk of the book wondering whether Nixie was using her siren powers to control him somehow, but no, the "romance" was just that badly written.
From what I recall, this book was a tiny bit better than the first. I still didn't like Damian much, but at least this time around he didn't make pigeons explode for giggles. Overall, though, Asher's style doesn't seem to work for me. I can only hope that it's just his urban fantasy I have issues with - I own one other book by him that I haven't yet read, a steampunk fantasy called Steamborn, and I'd like it to work better for me.