Showing posts with label 1 Star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 Star. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Book Review: Hunter Green by Brianna Stoddard

Review: Hunter Green
Author: Brianna Stoddard
No of Pages: 161
Release Date: 4 November 2010

HUNTER GREEN will blow you away! It is an amazing story that will show you the world in a whole new light! It is focused on an incredible teenage girl, named Emily, who sadly loses her mother from a menacing, evil werewolf. Emily vows revenge and begins hunting the creatures down. She gets help from Isabella, a kind Psychic Gypsy that knows how to help her become the ultimate hunter. Emily realizes her destiny and becomes a killing machine. She starts her journey across the world and leaves no werewolf's blood un-spilled in this wonderfully dark and bloody story.

Warning: This review will contain spoilers because the absurdity of it cannot be fully appreciated without them.

My Thoughts:

This has to be the most self-serving, poorly researched story I have ever read.

Emily has lost both of her parents, her father left when she was young and her mother was murdered by a werewolf.

Emily is probably the most annoying, yet voiceless character I have ever read. The writing was so poor that Emily doesn’t even register to me as the voice of this novel, we attempt to view the story through her eyes, through her selfish, childish ways but she’s nothing but a fluff character.

What I hated most about this book, and it was definitely hate not just extreme dislike, was the complete lack of research and the obvious laziness when it came to actually writing the story. It reads like it was written by a twelve year old and I actually did check that out half way through to make sure that it was actually written by an adult.

First off we have the completely believable scenario of Emily, a fifteen year old girl who has just lost the last of her family to a werewolf swearing vengeance on all who turn furry at the full moon. Okay.

So off she goes into the wild, with nothing in her pockets but her mother’s credit cards, a little bit of cash and her supplies. May I just add in here that she decided to wear high heeled boots for this journey – yep, that’s practical. Oh and it seems that credit card security no longer matters, because that wouldn’t suit the authors purposes, so Emily was able to use all of her mother’s credit cards, and draw down on the cash without having to show ID.

Isabella the gypsy-psychic - witch (because all gypsies are witches, didn’t you know?) takes her in because she has foreseen Emily saving the world. Not so unbelievable. But then we get to the part that really cheeses me off.

Isabella the gypsy-psychic-witch decides to do a tarot card reading – I am a card reader and like everything else, I don’t mind people using it, I don’t mind people making fun of it, but if you are going to reference it, research it first. The “spread” she did raised my eyebrows as it was, but then, apparently there is now a card called “the baby cradle”, are you kidding me? Do you think we are that stupid? Not to mention Isabella’s “spells” which were conveniently named to suit Emily’s purposes such as “To gain the speed of a cheetah” and “To become immortal”, very creative.

Then there was the solid silver and gold sword, yep, I like science too, so I will also point out that that is impossible, as the sword would be too soft, not to mention because of Emily’s wonderful awesomeness she only had to practice for a few weeks (instead of the decades it takes normal people) to master that and all of her other weapons. And these were only a few of the problems in the first thirty five pages.

Then we (finally) move on to some killing and hunting. There are hundreds of thousands of werewolves all over the world, they keep breeding and biting people to make new ones but of course Emily’s an ambitious girl, and vows to kill them all, she is so wonderfully fantastic that she never gets a scratch on her, or hurt in any way, she manages to kill dozens of werewolves at a time. And even manages to kill eight werewolves in five minutes. This is where the details could have been really juicy - as the synopsis promises - but we didn’t get anything, the writing literally went “After the next full moon I had finished searching the whole country and had killed a total of three hundred werewolves”. That is how the story continued from then on unless, of course, we had to hear in explicit detail exactly what she was wearing that day or how many outfits she bought in various colours during her travels.

I only finished this book out of obligation because it was a review book, and for the small hope that maybe, just maybe Emily died, or turned into a werewolf. But no this book was full of hate for weres who encompassed everything evil. There were no exceptions, it was quite racist actually, female weres were evil, males weres were evil, baby weres were evil, didn’t matter the age, the story, the circumstances, they were all evil.

But of course Emily managed to kill them all, within two years and with only two trips around the world, she becomes a hero because naturally everyone wanted to kill a species that they knew nothing about, everyone loved Emily. She even managed to get a bloke, and it only took a single meeting a poorly written clichéd paragraph at the end of the novel. “We had loved each other from the very first sight of each other. We were destined to be together.”

Not to mention all the other discrepancies, scattered throughout the novel. But honestly if I keep going, this review will be longer than the novel was itself. It was poorly written, poorly executed and based upon a very poor idea. There is a saying in the writing world, if you can pitch a book well, it is usually horrible, this book is pitched nicely enough, I was excited to read it, and then I turned the first page.

Hunter Green was a horrible waste of time. I feel sorry for my eyes, sorry for my PDF reader and sorry for anyone else who has the displeasure of reading it. One is the lowest rating I give, but it doesn't even deserve that.


Sunday, December 18, 2011

Book Review: Revving Her Wild Engines by Cassandre Dayne

Review: Revving Her Wild Engines
Author: Cassandre Dayne
No of Pages: 66
Release Date: 20 February 2011

Stephanie Simon was more than ready to have her most secret and sinful fantasies fulfilled. And the thought of having a torrid affair with David Tyler took her breath away. Unfortunately however, Stephanie and David have never met. Introduced by a friend, they've only conversed via the Internet, where they tell each other their every hidden fantasy. Stephanie's is a wicked tryst on the back of David's motorcycle and a ménage. And as luck would have it, David has the perfect third in mind.

Fuelled by Stephanie's hunger to explore, David sweeps Stephanie off her feet with a wild ride across a pool table in front of his friends and a ménage that leaves her engine revved for more. But both David and Stephanie hold a terrible secret. As they learn about their tragic pasts, neither knows if they can cling to the other for support and find the love and forgiveness they need.

My Thoughts:

There’s good erotic fiction, and then there’s not. Unfortunately Revving Her Wild Engines fell into the pretty horrible section.

Stephanie is traumatised, after battling something terrible that happened in her past for years now, she has decided to take that final step in letting go, no longer being held back by her fears she meets up with a man she has been chatting to for months on the internet. When her and David meet though it is more than just a weekend of wild passion, they connect with each other. The connection running deeper than anything Stephanie has ever felt.

Revving Her Wild Engines sounded like a nice quick, hot read. Something good for curling up with late one night to pass the time before bed. Unfortunately what I got was basically, really horrible book porn. The plot was terrible, the emotion was overly dramatized and the wording was flowery.

Erotic couplings such as this should result in some hot sex and maybe a call back, what I got was declarations of love within the first two days of them meeting. Their first hug was a “tender, loving embrace”. I’m sorry; I don’t care how good the sex was, but no.

The main thing that kept throwing me out of the mood that Dayne was struggling to create was the wording, “moistened her scarlet panties and she resisted the urge to wipe at herself.” I’m sorry, but yuck, she wanted to wipe at herself?! When I think “wipe” I think toilet paper.

Then there were the ridiculous situations they were put in, like oh I don’t know, giving head jobs on a balcony while people were watching. Or giving head jobs in the middle of a pub rec room in front of your four closest friends who have just met this woman.

His friends didn’t believe David when he told them he had a woman, if I saw that I’d think he’d hired a prostitute for the weekend. That isn’t hot, it’s dirty. Dayne could have made it hotter, with a different setting or better dialogue, but it read like a really bad porn movie.

The dialogue matched the rest of this train wreck as well. “Mm baby, are you hot for me?” “Oh yes, honey, I am so hot for you, I have been hot for you all day.” Really?

That was as good as it got. Well of course, apart from the over emotional speeches about how Stephanie couldn’t really be loved by David because she was so ugly, and such bad person.

This entire novella read like a bad soapie mixed with even worse porn. Overemotional, bad dialogue, horrible writing and stupid settings. Culminating in an ending that was not only clichéd and boring, but completely far-fetched.

If Dayne had left the emotional crap out of this story and used her material for a hot, wild coupling of two strangers, it might have worked, what we’re given though isn’t worth reading.


Thursday, December 15, 2011

Book Review: The Mark of the Vampire Queen by Joey W. Hill

Review: The Mark of the Vampire Queen
Series: Vampire Queen – Book 2
Author: Joey W. Hill
No of Pages: 370
Release Date: 5 February 2008

Full Servant. With his new title, Jacob must now attend to Lady Lyssa’s every need, venturing into a world of passion darker than he’s ever known. His time as a vampire hunter certainly hadn’t prepared him to embrace a world where humans are sexual commodities, but he adapted. Now he finds the integrity of his soul challenges as he serves his Mistress’s needs as fully as he services her desires.

As much as Jacob loves her, other servants wan against giving her his soul. Everyone knows that vampires have no regard for humans, so why would a vampiress bother treating a mere sex toy with respect? But Jacob knows a human servant is far more than that. His Mistress needs a warrior, a friend and a lover – a man who will serve her in all ways, even if he has to betray the priceless treasure of her love…

My Thoughts:
The Mark of the Vampire Queen was a very hard one for me to finish, purely because it bored me.

Jacob is now a full servant of the vampire queen Lyssa. With this title comes the knowledge that Lyssa is very sick and dying, and now, because of his new stature, so will he die along with her.

This pains the pair of them as in their own way, they love each other, being soul mates throughout Lyssa’s incomparably long life and Jacob through his various incarnations, to have found each other in this capacity Jacob wants to hold on to as her for as long as he can.

I will be quite frank and say that this book bored me literally to sleep. There was far too much detail wrapped up in politics and medieval fairs that I had to force myself to finish just to have the pleasure of writing this review. The politics interest me, but the way they were written in reminding me of watching Parliament Time on the ABC, a lot of people talking quietly for two hours and once every three months having a raving blue with each other that can be quite entertaining.

I originally picked up this series because I read an excerpt of book five, Vampire Mistress, and thought it intriguing. It might still be, it’s just a shame that I will not get to it because of the quality of the first two books.

In hindsight I remember the first book being relatively slow, to the point of having to force myself through it as well. There just isn’t enough driving this story for me to enjoy it. Sure you have a problem in the form of Lyssa’s impending doom and the effect it will have on Jacob, you also have the likes of Carnal trying to upset the order Lyssa has been trying to build between vampires and humans for the last thousand years.

Yet when it’s put on paper in the way that Hill writes it, it just drags on and on. In the end I was marking chapter ends so I felt a small victory each time I reached one.

The sex was hot in this series overall, I will admit that, some of the scenes Hill came up with were especially well written, but there just wasn’t enough built around those scenes for me to remotely enjoy this story at all.

Others in this series:
The Vampire Queen's Servant
A Vampire's Claim
Beloved Vampire
Vampire Mistress
Vampire Trinity
Vampire's Keeper

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Book Review: Accidentally Dead by Dakota Cassidy


Review: Accidentally Dead
Series: Accidental Friends – Book 2
Author: Dakota Cassidy
No of Pages: 339
Release Date: 1 July 2008

NINA ALWAYS LOVED THE NIGHTLIFE.

It’s a lousy first day on the job for dental assistant Nina Blackman when a patient, loopy from anesthesia, bites her. At least he was cute. But for real drama she can’t beat the next evening. Nina wakes up with a set of razor-sharp fangs, bionic vision, supersonic hearing, and a taste for blood. There must be a good explanation. There is. It’s her patient, Greg Statleon.

SHE JUST NEVER EXPECTED TO BE THE NIGHTLIFE.

A visit to his Long Island castle hardly results in a cure. Greg claims there isn’t one. Unfortunately, Nina isn’t wild about her lifestyle change – or the danger that goes along with it. She’s determined to prove this infuriating vampire wrong. It’s a shame he’s so irresistible. It’s a bigger shame that he’s dead. On the other hand, they’re perfect for each other – if Nina‘s willing to commit to one man for eternity.

My Thoughts:

Accidentally Dead was very lucky it didn’t find a home on the DNF pile it started so bad.

Nina was accidentally bitten by a vampire when he went to the dentist to get his tooth fixed. After rejecting any sort of notion that she will never be human again and trying to find a way to turn back she not only has to find a possibly evil vampire who could help her, but she also needs to content with her growing feelings for her maker.

Accidentally Dead was basically a replica of The Accidental Werewolf only with vampires. Girl gets bitten by something supernatural in under far-fetched circumstances, girl rejects what she has been turned into, girl falls for supernatural that turned her and accepts her new life.

Now it’s probably lucky that I can barely remember what happened in The Accidental Werewolf  apart from the general gist of the story because I was pretty sure I liked Nina in that story. Now? Not so much. Nina was a vile potty-mouthed idiot who developed a crazy notion that Greg was evil and didn’t want to give her humanity back so he could control her for his evil plan to take over the world.

But it wasn’t really Nina or any of the other characters I had a problem with. It was the whole premise of this book and the way it was written.

I don’t really want to know what Cassidy’s word document looked like but it must have looked like an ode to Christmas with all of the red and green lighting up the page. Words like “hawt” “dayum” and “gawd” marred every page. Swear words were as frequent as the word “the” and yet halfway through everyone decided to change their vocabularies (especially Nina) to incorporate words like “Flip-off” and “B-word”. If you’re going to swear, at least be consistent with it.

The whole premise of Accidentally Dead though goes against not only normal vampire lore, but the books actual lore. Greg’s tooth was hurting, but no one ever finds out why he can’t heal himself or why there are no late night dentists closer than an hour away from his home. Then we also go back to stupid Twilight vampire logic that one bite makes a vampire, which is wrong on so many levels, because how would normal not blood baggie drinking evil vampires feed without turning everyone they feed from? I’m pretty sure we didn’t have packaged blood from willing donors five hundred years ago.

Then we have the stupidity of the 500 year old dusting which states that if you don’t mate with another vampire before you turn five hundred you die – this rule by the way has been around since before the beginning of time according to vampires. So of course Greg who has never turned another vampire must either mate with an evil chick no one likes or Nina who he turned a few weeks ago and barely knows, or die. I really want to see this relationship 100 years down the track.

Like I said, it’s not so much the characters themselves I have a problem with (they can’t help how they’re written) but the plot driving the story is pathetic. I don’t mind swearing, I do mind the butchering of the English language and I am surprised I finished this book, although it may come down to a mild case of OCD, but I will definitely not be continuing on with this series.

Others in this series:
The Accidental Werewolf
The Accidental Human
Accidentally Demonic
Accidentally Catty

Monday, July 18, 2011

Book Review: The Fallen Star by Jessica Sorensen

Review: The Fallen Star
Series: The Fallen Star – Book 1
Author: Jessica Sorensen
No of Pages: 447
Release Date: 9 April 2011

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302504075l/11051889.jpg
For eighteen year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. Up until recently, she has been incapable of feeling emotion. And when she’s around Alex, the gorgeous new guy at school, she can feel electricity that makes her skin buzz. Not to mention the monsters that haunt her nightmares have crossed over into real-life. But with Alex seeming to hate her and secrets popping up everywhere, Gemma’s life is turning into a chaotic mess. Things that shouldn’t be real suddenly seem to exist. And as her world falls apart, figuring out the secrets of her past becomes a matter of life and death.

My Thoughts:

The Fallen Star didn’t live up to my expectations at all; it was an extremely frustrating read.

From since before she can remember, Gemma hasn’t been able to feel emotion of any sort, she has gone through life with no friends and no family she can talk to. Until one seemingly unimportant day, when she feels her first emotion ever, and things spiral downward from there.

Gemma was an extremely stupid, naive, boring character, she encompasses everything that is – stupid teenage girl. From day one she made inappropriate decisions that simply cannot be passed off as adolescent immaturity.

My biggest pet peeve with her was her constant running to Alex and her non-committal statement confirming that she shouldn’t be doing it but she just wants to have a bit of fun after so many years of not feeling blah blah snore. Alex lied to her, kept things from her, deliberately distracts her and is obviously using her for not only selfish but dangerous purposes.

Gemma never followed anything up, Alex would let something important slip about her past and Gemma would constantly make a point of saying “you are not going to get out of telling me this”, but does she ever follow through? Of course not, which gives Alex the go ahead to continuously lead her on without telling her anything and lying to her the whole way.

Even after confirmation that she was being lied to and a perfectly good reason not to go with Alex, she still chased after him.

Gemma was a weak character and extremely dull. Sorensen tried to make her witty by talking to the reader even going as far to say “oh, don’t look at me like that” but it just didn’t work. Gemma was not only boring, but extremely dumb. After seeming to develop visions of the past and possibly the future, Gemma is given all of the pieces of the puzzle about halfway through the novel to piece everything together, even after the reader was told what was going on at the end of the story, Gemma whose POV we are in, still didn’t seem to know what was going on.

I’m not quite sure what Sorensen was trying to achieve with the character of Alex, but whatever it was, she didn’t pull it off at all. Alex was a complete tool. He was not a handsome broody guy, he was a complete wanker, there is absolutely nothing to like about him, he is a brainwashed, pathological liar. He tries to hide behind the “I’m just a moody guy” excuse but no, he is just a malevolent character. At one point I actually swore out loud at the book because he promised Gemma that he “would tell her everything” my kneejerk reaction to that was bulls***!

I also found it hard to get through The Fallen Star because of the horrible editing. Usually a few mistakes here and there don’t bother me, but whened a sentencing is contantly reads like this and these author seems to haves no concepts of the correct uses of the word “there” it becoming very frustrate.

It read like a first draft basically, errors were everywhere and the book probably could have been at least fifty pages shorter if you simply took out the amount of times certain facts were repeated, sometimes the same line used consecutively over the course of three chapters.

The Fallen Star was a big disappointment for me, the characters had no life and were complete contradictions of themselves, the story line relied too heavily on the characters so it never seemed to move and the book was so badly edited that I was tempted to line edit it myself.



Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Book Review: Talon, come fly with me by Gigi Sedlmayer

Review: Talon, come fly with me
Series: Talon – Book 1
Author: Gigi Sedlmayer
No of Pages: 220
Release Date: 14 January 2010


Nine-year-old blond Matica lives in a remote little village on a dry plateau in the Andes of Peru. She moved here with her Australian missionary and schoolteacher parents when she was five years old. Ever since she could remember she faced cruel rejection because of her growth handicap. She is trapped in a body the size of a two year old. Because of that the local Indians wouldn’t accept her into their community or allow her to play with their children. Under the watchful eyes of her parents who understand her, lonely Matica explores the plateau for entertainment.

With patience and a sense of adventure she befriended a pair of condors and named them Tamo and Tima. A strong bond and love developed between them.

Having and egg, Tamo and Tima try to fight off a couple of poachers but they succeed in stealing their egg from it’s ledge. Eventually Tamo drives them away but the poachers leave the egg between some boulders on the plateau. Being unable to bring it back to the ledge, Tamo and Tima make it clear to Matica to take care of the egg, so she does.

Exactly on Matica’s tenth birthday, the condor fledgling ‘Talon’ hatches. The book then describes in detail how Matica helps Talon grow into the majestic bird he was meant to be.

Two months after confidently flying, the most unbelievably amazing thing happens. What Matica had dreamed of ever since she first befriended the condors, actually unfolds. That changes her life so completely that she can now see a positive side to her handicap. The Indians then fully accept the new Matica into their community.

This is the beginning of a time of incredible adventures with Talon and Matica, which is carried on in subsequent Talon books.

My Thoughts:

Talon, come fly with me had an ok start, but went downhill from there.

Matica is a 10 year old girl with a growth disability, after being shunned by the Indians in the village that she lives in, she finds her own place to play, by herself and away from their harsh comments. In the process she befriends a condor whom she names Tamo. They become so close that Tamo gives her his mate’s egg to raise because of the danger surrounding it with poachers.

When Talon is born Matica becomes his surrogate mother; feeding, caring for and raising him where Tamo and his mate, Tima, cannot. Talon and Matica become if possible closer than Tamo and Matica were and it’s with the help of Talon that Matica’s dreams of finally being accepted start to come true.

Talon, come fly with me has a good premise. When I read the summary, when I read what I just wrote, I wonder how it could be that a bird could give that much hope to a child that she could overcome the stigma of her disability. What I got was a far-fetched and poorly put together fairytale that has very little logic driving it.

Talon, come fly with me raises a lot of questions with me. If a village shuns your daughter to the point that she has no-one¬ to talk to or play with for five years, why don’t you move? If your daughter has a disability that stunts her growth, why are you letting her run around a forest without supervision? If you see your 10 year old daughter befriending a bird that you are scared of and that has the potential to kill her, why don’t you intervene? If you have been living in a village for five of the most formative years of your life, how can you not know the language? And finally, since when do condors have the intelligence to understand and communicate with people?

Now, the first few of my questions stem from the complete lack of parental support or supervision that was shown to me by Matica’s parents. My mother would have never let me run around without supervision when I was 10 years old, especially not if I had a growth disability that left me the size of a two year old, because logically, that kind of problem would cause issues elsewhere, with bones and organs.

She definitely would not and probably still will not let me go and hang around with a dangerous wild animal that is bigger than me and has the potential to claw my face off and eat it. If my mother does not think something is safe for her to do, she would definitely not let any of her children go anywhere near it, especially if it was alive and had a mind of its own.

My second issue is with Matica herself, she came across to me as a wilful, selfish child that has been spoilt in all the wrong ways throughout her life. She has been living in a village since she was five, and she still doesn’t know their language? How does that happen, her brother was born there and he doesn’t seem to know the language either. Matica expected the birds to give her their egg, Matica expected the egg to hatch on her birthday, and Matica expected her parents to be okay with a metre tall, talon footed animal running around their house crapping on their beds, eating from their table and knocking everything down.

My third issue is with the complete lack of logic contained within the pages of Talon, come fly with me. I was so inflamed by the sheer absurdity of this book that I actually did research into condors and their habits. Condors have never seemed to show above average intelligence, and yet both Tamo and Talon answer Matica’s questions with complete understanding, my cat is an intelligent creature, I have lived with her for 13 years and been talking to her for that long as well and no matter what kind of question I ask I have never and will never get a definitive yes or no answer from her, a grunt maybe but not a shaking of the head. Condors also lay two eggs, if the first one doesn’t survive the condors will instinctively lay a second, it’s how we are boosting their numbers in captivity the handlers take the first egg and hand raise it so the condors will lay a second one, was there any mention of that here though? Of course not, because that wouldn’t fit in with the overall plan of Matica saving the day and becoming a hero.

Talon, come fly with me hasn’t got any redeeming qualities for me, it reads like a first draft, jumpy and poorly written. Nothing is detailed and everything within it only serves to meet Matica’s needs and to make her seem a hero. The entire time we are spoken at and not to, we are being told that Matica is happy, but we never actually see it. All of the secondary characters are only there to boost Matica’s own opinion of herself and come of one dimensional and poorly created.

Talon, come fly with me was a complete train wreck, the idea was poorly constructed and the writing was poorly formed. I didn’t come away with anything from this other than mounting frustration and a new found knowledge of condors that I researched separately because of the absurdity surrounding the main character and her completely irrational relationship with a bird.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Book Review: Demonic Persuasion by Mahalia Levey

Review: Demonic Persuasion
Series: Prophecies Implied – Book 1
Author: Mahalia Levey
No of Pages: 75
Release Date: 15 November 2010

Born of a Navajo healer and a high-level prince of Hell, The Dine Gods demanded Fatal be turned over to her mother's tribe to learn their healing arts and kept away from demon hands. But with her tutelage came cruel segregation and disrespect because of her father's heritage. Not knowing why her life has suddenly come under demon attack, Fatal sets out, armed with her knowledge and her fighting skills, to take out any evil that getsin her way.

As prince of a lower level of Hell, Orobus signed a contract in blood that he be betrothed to Fatal, the high prince of Hell’s half-breed daughter. Oracle by birth, he isn’t privy to complete visions with regard to himself. Having forgotten the fateful night he signed the agreement, he’s thrust into the fight of his life—the fight to claim his woman! Come Hell or high water, he will take care of what is rightfully his, even if it means making her face both sides of her heritage and teaching her there is no shame.

My Thoughts:

I was expecting great things from Demonic Persuasion but I was left confused and mildly irritated.

Fatal has been shunned by the community she was raised in because of her half demon heritage. She leaves to strike out on her own and winds up fighting in demonic bars to earn her keep. When Orobus spots her in his bar he is drawn to her presence before he enforces their contract made at her birth and whisks her off to Hell.

Fatal really wasn’t a strong character, she was one contradiction after another. She acted tough was tough but then seemed to fall apart about halfway through. She has the training of the Navajo healers, her birth mothers people, and hates her demonic side. She also hates her parents hates Orobus and hates the life she has been forced to lead. But then all of a sudden, she can’t be without Orobus, loves her brother and runs to her mother’s open arms a day after telling them all she hated them.

That was the entire tone of Demonic Persuasion, that and trying to confuse the reader to the point of violent frustration. Every third page I was re-reading entire paragraphs just to figure out if Fatal was still in Hell or on Earth.

Orobus who apparently has this highly valued contract with Fatal’s father giving him possession of her and the right to mate her against her will didn’t even know who she was even after she stated her true name. Then six chapters later he is telling her how he had been waiting so long for her to come to him.

Not to mention the complete character change when Fatal is forced to go to Hell after being knocked unconscious, and waking up in a strange room, does she try to run? Does she put up any sort of a fight against the being she hates most in this world? Of course not, the next course of action is to so clearly jump into bed with a demon prince of Hell and wake up the next day like this is the life you have been living for the last ten years even though you still hate the person you just woke up next to.

The real killer for me was when Orobus was beaten to within an inch of his life for covering for Fatal, he told her it would take him two weeks or so to recover from the poison infested wounds and yet he’s up the next morning for another exciting round of I-don’t-like-you-and-there-is-no-logical-reason-for-me-to-be-doing-this sex.

Demonic Persuasion was a buffet of absurdity. Levey took a good idea and hacked it to pieces with incoherent writing, jumpy timelines and a very shaky main character that didn’t seem to know who or what she was.

I have been known to have masochistic tendencies, but even I will not be sitting down the next instalment of this trainwreck.


Monday, August 9, 2010

Book Review: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Review: Beautiful Creatures
Series: Caster Chronicles – Book 1
Author: Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl
No of Pages: 563
Release Date: 1 December 2009

In Ethan Wate’s hometown there lies the darkest of secrets...

There is a girl.
Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head...green eyes, black hair.
Lena Duchannes.

There is a curse.
On the Sixteenth Moon, of the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it’s been promised.
And no one can stop it.

In the end, there is a grave.

Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and, on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided.
Ethan never even saw it coming.

My Thoughts:

Five hundred and sixty three pages later and I still don’t know what is going on.

Beautiful Creatures follows the story of Ethan Wate a boy living in a small town called Gatlin. He meets a girl at school and is in a way attracted to her. He feels he should help her because she has been shunned by the entire town for being the niece of Macon Ravenwood, a decidedly crazy shut in who hasn’t been seen in years.

One afternoon whilst spending time with Lena, Ethan finds a locket near her house. When they both touch it something weird happens and they are shown a memory from a different time. Ethan and Lena must figure out what the locket is trying to tell them before Lena’s sixteenth birthday.

That little narration is about as much as I can discern from reading Beautiful Creatures. It took three hundred pages for us to be told that Lena is a Caster (witch) and for the entire novel we were walking up and down Gatlin’s eight streets skipping school and playing with lockets they were told to bury.

Ethan’s narration is boring. How can a book so long contain so little? If you chop out the first four hundred pages I would have loved it because then Lena’s family comes to town, her completely dysfunctional half crazy, half evil family. Only then does anything happen and even that doesn’t really add too much to furthering the plot.

It has honestly taken me so long to write this review just because I am wondering what to say about Beautiful Creatures at all.

Gatlin is a backwards country town full of intolerable people unwilling to change or even budge in their views. It reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird. Beautiful Creatures was an updated version of TKAM with a paranormal aspect thrown in.

Lena is a moody drama queen. She’ll lose her temper and blow up a window and then go on for days about how she thinks she is going to go Dark (evil). And yet I still can’t get a clear picture of what she looks like in my head, because throwing tantrums and running off was all she ever did.

I couldn’t see how Lena and Ethan developed a “deep, powerful love” it just wasn’t written in there. He chased her around for most of the book, annoyed her uncle by letting himself into their house uninvited and caused more trouble than what was needed by not listen to Amma his caretaker and getting rid of the weird obviously evil locket that kept showing him clips from the past.

Beautiful Creatures has been raved about constantly but I am seriously finding it hard to see the attraction. Nearly 600 pages and nothing has been answered, and I am not keen to find out.


Also in this series:
Beautiful Darkness


Sunday, June 20, 2010

Book Review: Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles

Review: Leaving Paradise
Series: Leaving Paradise – Book 1
Author: Simone Elkeles
No of Pages: 303
Release Date: 1 April 2007

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE PERSON WHO DAMAGED YOU FOR LIFE...

Caleb Becker spent the past year in juvenile detention.

Maggie Armstrong spent the past year in hospitals and physical therapy.

Two teens who were scarred one fateful night are going to have to face their greatest challenge yet – meeting up with each other again.

...BECOMES THE PERSON YOU TRUST THE MOST?

My Thoughts:

I am so glad that I didn’t read this before I read Perfect Chemistry, or it would have put me off Elkeles altogether.

Leaving Paradise was one big selfish teenage whinge. Yes these kids have problems, but they don’t do anything about it and they don’t take any of the blame themselves, everyone else is at fault.

Maggie was hit by a car driven by Caleb a year ago, resulting from that is a mangled leg that Maggie refuses to use. What I couldn’t stand about Maggie was her lack of courage and willpower. She refused to put any pressure on her leg and expected everyone to treat her special because of it.
When the elderly Mrs. Reynolds refuses to give her special treatment Maggie doesn’t like her. It showed a lack of character. Sure there may be people out there like Maggie, but it doesn’t set a good example.

Caleb on the other hand is fresh out of gaol and expects everyone to just accept him and go back to normal after he has mutilated one of the townsfolk. It grated on my nerves how much of a chip on his shoulder he had, I wanted to punch him the face for most of the book and tell him to wake up.

I know teenagers can be stupid, but did these two have to be that stupid?

Then there was the romance, Maggie fell in love with the guy that crippled her...there was a complete eye-roll moment as soon as I read the sentence. That whole part of the story was completely far-fetched.

The only thing I did like about Leaving Paradise was Mrs. Reynolds, she taught the pair to wake up and get over themselves. She had a world of wisdom that I could have listened to for hours and a wit that only an old lady can get away with saying out loud.

There was thankfully a change in Maggie toward the end when she hardened-up, the way it came about though and her sudden change in thinking was another complete eye-roll moment.

Elkeles is a masterful writer and it shows in this book, this just wasn’t one of her better ideas.


Also in this series:
Return to Paradise

Others who reviewed this:
Sarah's Book Reviews

Monday, March 8, 2010

Book Review: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

Review: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D Salinger
No. Of Pages: 214
Release Date: July 1951

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists.

It begins,

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."

His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation.

My Thoughts:

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