There are monsters among us.

Summary off back of book
Welcome to the Big Apple. There's a troll under the Brooklyn Bridge, a boggle in Central Park, and a beautiful vampire in a penthouse on the Upper East Side -- and that's only the beginning. Of course, most humans are oblivious to the preternatural nightlife around them, but Cal Leandros is only half human.

His father's dark lineage is the stuff of nightmares -- and he and his entire otherworldly race are after Cal. Why? Cal hasn't exactly wanted to stick around long enough to find out.

He and his half brother, Niko, have managed to stay a step ahead for four years, but now Cal's dad has found them again. And Cal is about to learn why they want him, why they've always wanted him: He is the key to unleashing their hell on earth. The fate of the human world will be decided in the fight for Cal's life....

Review
We're all familiar with the 'traditional' fairytale creatures - tall, noble elves, trolls that look like a disproportionate human with smelly, greasy hair, little fauns with goat legs playing on their pan pipes. Thurman takes a break from the usual stereotypes, however, and throws a completely different twist on these creatures.
The troll is more like an evil - and giant - pile of spaghetti than a lumpy human.
The 'faun' doesn't really have goat legs; it was all just a bad case of fashion before its time.
And the elves are nothing like the tall, fair folk of Tolkien. These elves, or Auphe, are just downright mean and nasty, and not the arrogant type of evil. I mean the ugly, smelly, like to torture their meals before eating them, type of evil.
Caliban Leandros is one of these Auphe creatures, well, half-Auphe, and it's decidedly not fun.
Cal is the result of a breeding program, his father an Auphe and his mother a hired receptacle. At an early age Cal was yanked into the Auphe dimension. When he suddenly reappeared, he was without his memory and the target of monsters everywhere. In the company of his brother Niko, Cal has been running and hiding ever since. Whatever the Auphe wanted him for it was bad news, with the situation becoming more intense the longer they ran. This sends Niko and Cal on a desperate search for answers that have them teaming up with a beautiful, though strange, vampire and a faun named Robin Goodfellow.
Cal isn't even safe inside himself. If being a creature with dark, malevolent urges isn't enough, Cal's mind and body is seized by a banshee, or darkling, and the reader has the unnerving experience of having the narrator stay the same, but having his personality shift right into the dumps. Now Niko and Robin's problem is how to save the world and save Cal. A tough act in any case made harder by the fact that the new Cal is all for killing everyone, once and for all.
The story is told in that first person, tough and wisecracking style that has become popular lately. Cal and Niko's dialog is heavily teenage - but given that it's from the point of view of a teenager, that's to be expected. Thurman goes to great lengths to rewrite the world of the Fae and turn it into something far from what we think of as the norm, to great success.
Overall, this book is highly refreshing and a welcome break from the female starring fantasy reads that are becoming more and more popular lately. There is enough acting to keep the story interesting and pleanty of twists to keep the reader guessing.
I'm looking forward to the sequel comming out in March 2007.