It is often a sad day when a well-loved series comes to an end. Whether it is a television series cut short through cancelation (yes, I’m still crying bitter tears over ABC’s official ending to V), a movie series rebooted after poor box office showings (will we truly never see Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard ever again?) or a book series drawing to a natural close after one too many disappointing outings (note to Charlaine Harris: just go count your millions and leave Sookie alone), emotions range from outrage to acceptance to sweet sorrow when the inevitable goodbye must finally be bade.

In the case of The Signs of the Zodiac, Vicki Pettersson’s paradigm-shattering Urban Fantasy series, I am somewhat torn. On the one hand, I think the concept is one of the most outstandingly original and utterly enchanting mashups the expansive subgenre has ever produced, and I think it a shame it has to be brought to a close. But on the other hand I just feel kind of wrong wishing for yet more books in the series.

I do like to believe myself not entirely sadistic, after all.

And that’s what it would be. Sadism. Sadism to want to read more in this series, since from the very first the overwhelming theme here has been the relentless torture and eternal suffering of our massively unfairly-treated heroine, Joanna Archer.

A quick brief. Joanna is a Las Vegas native, daughter of the city’s preeminent gaming tycoon, and bears deep psychological scars from a brutal attack when she was only sixteen. In the first book of her adventures, 2007’s The Scent of Shadows, she is about to turn twenty-five, and it’s a good thing this is when we join her life, already in progress, because it is then that she finds herself endowed with… wait for it… superpowers. She is one of the chosen elite, a born warrior made up of both Light and Dark, and she is thereafter thrust into a chaotic battle for supremacy over her city’s oblivious souls. Over the space of five books -- and yet only one year -- Joanna must deal with pain after pain, both physical and emotional, as she sees innocents die, must hide who she is, lives constantly in fear, joins the side of Light and is then betrayed by it, rediscovers an old love (only to lose him again), and then finds a new love (only to lose him, too).

Which brings us to this latest, and last, in her compelling, yet eternally upsetting, chronicles. Pregnant, outcast, and with her baby daddy Hunter held captive by a mad goddess on a largely inaccessible plane called Midheaven (which I think I’ve enjoyed visiting even less than our heroine since its introduction in Book 4… and she’s almost died there a few times), Jo has aligned herself with the “grays”, a growing cadre of rogue agents of both Light and Shadow who are also battling for Las Vegas’ heart. Much of this book is occupied with Joanna’s attempts to get into Midheaven and retrieve Hunter, but there is also the true Big Bad of the series that must finally be seen to: her biological father, the Tulpa, who’s kind of an imaginary being with power gained only through belief, who is evil as hell and whose enjoyably sarcastic sense of humor is the only legacy Jo probably wishes she’d inherited (but since she has a real affinity with deadly violence that few UF heroines can match, I tend to think they have more in common than she’d really like).

So, we have a rescue from Midheaven and the mad goddess to defeat there, as well, along with the take down of the big evil Dad and his henchmen… plus, we also have to handle the autocratic and insane leader of the Light, Warren, who is power-crazed and vengeful and more than a little bit Shadow himself, now. Is that all Joanna had to deal with in this book? Yep, that’s about it…

Wait, I mentioned she’s pregnant, right?

So, we have all of this going down, and Joanna makes some spectacularly bad decisions and reacts unpardonably slowly in several cases (as is her wont; she’s never exactly been the sharpest sword in the weapons room), and her allies come and go and she doesn’t know who to trust and does Hunter really love her and why does Midheaven feed on male energy and can Solange just die already and, dear Lord, Jo is so dumb about her powers, and there are some terrific pop culture references and moments of very real black humor and so much else is going on in this breathless, unstoppable freight train of a book -- nay, series -- that once you start it you will not want it to end, will not even be able to imagine exactly how it might end… much like this sentence.

But when it does end, it is all so perfect, so right, that all of Jo’s angst-ridden experience since coming into her powers (and then losing them… really, she’s always losing stuff, it’s most careless of her) suddenly seems very well worth it.

I once called David Feintuch’s Seafort Saga “Science Fiction for masochists”, as his main character was constantly getting the metaphorical shit kicked out of him in book after book after book. The Signs of the Zodiac is its Urban Fantasy equivalent, and in the final analysis I must admit to being glad that our poor put-upon heroine’s torment has come to an end. But I will miss her and her justifiable complaints; will miss her fellow agents of both Light and Shadow; will miss the comic book feel of this series and, above all, will miss Pettersson’s lovingly depicted Las Vegas in all of its beautiful, terrible glory.

Although, I still don’t get what the whole Midheaven thing was all about. But then, I guess there are just some things that we mere mortals were simply not meant to understand.

   -- Rachel Hyland