Body of Sin by Eve Silver

Lokan Krayl is one of the sons of Set, Egyptian god of darkness and evil. Ever since their birth, their father has used them as messengers and servants, tasked with bringing him the horribly evil souls that he had to eat to sustain his Godhood. However, Set knew that one of his sons, just one, would have the power to procreate and have children, so when Lokan was seduced by a woman and ended up siring a daughter by him, Set knew that his plan to escape the underworld could finally bear fruit.

Set had long ago been banished to the underworld for trying to overthrow Osiris and Ra and take the premier place in the Egyptian pantheon himself. But to prevent him from taking over Lokan's body, he was killed. Lokan's brothers risked their own lives to bring him back from the dead. But that still left him stranded in the land of the dead. And now Set's priorities have shifted, from taking over Lokan's body, to taking over the body of Lokan's daughter. And now that they need Lokan back in the real world more than ever, retrieving him falls to Bryn Carr, the mother of his daughter.

Bryn is unusual. Unlike some people who have access to the underworld through one or two parents of various lines of gods and goddesses dealing with either bringing the souls of the dead to the underworld or guiding them through it to various realms where the dead souls end up, Brynn is descended from all the lines of every God or Goddess of the dead or underworld soul guides from every pantheon known. It was what made her so valuable to her brothers and made them use her in their various missions as mercenaries. This is what made her go to a bar and seek out the nearest available man to get her pregnant, because it meant she would no longer be useful to them.

But she and Lokan have gotten over how she used him and he had been a real father to her daughter before his untimely death. But to escape the underworld in his body, it won't just be business as usual for Brynn. For while guiding souls into the underworld or the death realms is usually what she does- guiding someone who is alive out is a far different task, and one not undertaken without cost- something she is all too interested in keeping from Lokan, perhaps because this is her way of atoning for using him in the first place.

But as they travel through the twelve gates of the underworld, their trials are bringing them closer together, to a need for each other that has everything to do with love. But how can Bryn confess the cost of bringing Lokan out of the underworld to him when he has suddenly become everything to her? And how will Lokan react when he is told that he can only end the threat to his daughter by taking his father's place, and when Bryn is suddenly snatched away from him by the immutable laws of the underworld?

This book is the finale of the part of the series focussing on the sons of Set in the Otherkin series. So far, we have seen what happened to Lokan's brothers, but now we get to see Lokan himself, and how he got himself into the situation of fathering a child- the very thing that got him killed in the first place. Of all of his father's children, he was the one most content to serve his father, so his death at the hands of his father's enemies was quite a surprise.

But as much as he is willing to serve his father, he is neither willing to give up his own body to his father to have him free of the underworld, nor is he willing to give up the body of his daughter, either. And the realization that he comes to about his father, and how he has been used almost means nothing when compared to putting his own innocent daughter through the same fate. But if he chooses to stay behind in the underworld, he cannot protect his daughter, and leaving means having to give up Bryn. Is there some other way to keep the woman he loves, and the daughter he adores?

I loved the ending, because Lokan thinks he's lost it all, only to have something quite different happen, and the ending is as happy as happy can be: the bad guys are punished, the lovers happily reunited, and the brothers back together at last. The ending, in addition to being happy, was more than fitting, and so receives high marks from me. Highly recommended, but read the other Otherkin books first, as you'll like it better with more background.