The first thing you do, you kill the sheriff. This is a bit of writers’ lore that generally works, and JD Bell displays it done well. SELAI hits the ground running and doesn’t slow down. It’s not really an urban fantasy because the setting is more varied and would better be described as modern fantasy. Bell establishes his characters quickly, and leaves puzzles like fishhooks in the story. This locks the reader in as one tries to make sense of novel and totally alien concepts. Bell escapes the trap of simply reheating or rehashing the common tropes in favor of striking out in new directions and draws the reader into a world where our quotidian world is only a small part of the universe. For an action-packed read in which the rules are not, at first, clearly perceived, this book is ground-breaking.James K Burk, author of Taking Hope and The Twelve.