When last we saw Sergeant Corrie Welling of the Maradaine Constabulary she was abducted while investigating a child slavery ring and thrown into a ship along with the latest victims. Corrie is the nineteen year old foul mouthed younger sister of Minox Welling and is now no longer is a minor character in the Maradaine Constabulary series. An Unintended Voyage is the first of Maresca's books to take place beyond the city of Maradaine. Its great to see more of the world and interact with people from many different cultures as Corrie attempts to make her way home from the other side of the globe.

The storylines in Maresca's four Maradaine series come together with plenty of mayhem in City of the People. It isn't all that unique for an author to pull together various threads, but in this case Maresca pulls together threads from four different series, spanning twelve novels, in an absolutely masterful way. The main characters from each of the series are thrown together as they battle necromancy, cultists, magical constructs, complicated contraptions, and a dragon in their efforts to save the missing children. Can vigilante college students, honest constables, criminal masterminds, and brave knights survive the betrayals and plotting of the Brotherhood of the Nine?

The Rynax brothers, Asti and Verci, decided to go straight and are almost ready to open their gadget emporium when Holver Alley burns to the ground. None of the shopkeepers have enough ready cash to rebuild so its not surprising when someone offers them all quick money to sell out. The brothers find it suspicious that someone wants to buy every lot in a poor neighborhood so they start looking into the buyer. Finding that information proves remarkably difficult even for Asti, who was in Druth Intelligence. Since it's obvious someone burned them out on purpose, the brothers, along with some of the other shopkeepers and residents, go back to their roots and set up an elaborate scheme to steal the information they want and get some payback.

Veranix is a not so humble student of magic at the University of Maradaine. But at night he takes to the rooftops as the vigilante known as the Thorn. Armed with his bow, a magic rope, and trained as an acrobat, he seeks revenge on the drug lord who killed his father. Like any good acrobat he walks a narrow line while he balances his studies with his secret work with the help of a pretty gardener and his brother who belongs to the same street gang their father once led. The Thorn is an action packed young adult batman-esque adventure.

The Constabulary is my personal favorite among Maresca's interconnected Maradaine series. There's law, disorder, magic, politics, spies, and a dash of sarcasm. Satrine Rainey is a former Druth Intelligence agent who needs a decent job to support her family after her husband, a detective inspector, is nearly killed and left comatose. She appealed to the chief of the Constabulary for help and he offered her the poorly paying position of clerk because they don't hire women as Inspectors. So she calls upon her former training and forges a new letter offering her the position she wants in her old neighborhood of Inemar. Minox Welling is a young inspector with a highly analytical mind whose dogged pursuit of the truth annoys his fellow Inspectors leaving him free to partner with Rainey. Welling is also an untrained mage because his gift developed too late to be accepted to either of the mage schools. Nor do any mages work for the Constabulary. Which proves to be a problem on their first case together, investigating what appears to be the ritual sacrifice of a mage.