Monthly Archives: February 2013

Book Review of K.C. Blake’s Vampire Rule

I grabbed K.C. Blake’s Vampires Rule off of Amazon’s KDP recently, only to discover that I had already ‘purchased’ it from Smashwords at some point in the past. Guess the synopsis really appealed to me if I thought to download it twice. (Note: as I wrote this I noticed that it is currently free on both sites.)

Description from Goodreads:
They don’t call him Jackpot for nothing.

Jack has always beat the odds… at least until now. When he was attacked by a werewolf, vampires saved him. When he got tired of living the vampire life, another werewolf attack freed him, making him human again. Now Jack just wants to live a normal life, but what’s normal about a hunter girlfriend, a brother who wants to stake him to be on the safe side, and a head werewolf building an army to rule the world?

Review (with some spoilers):
I’m having a little trouble writing this review. Not because I don’t know what I want to say, but because I don’t want to write the exact same review 15 other people already have. The truth is, however, that just like a number of previous readers, I found the idea of this story fascinating but the execution lacking. Jack, Silver, and Jersey’s destiny was an interesting one, but there were a number of plot holes and a couple just curiosity holes. For example, they have to fight the head werewolf, so what about the head vampire that was created at the same time as him? He’s never mentioned. Surely he was important at some point.

I thought that the characters were a little flat and I greatly disliked the way that Silver was constantly treated as a child. She had trained her WHOLE life to be a werewolf hunter. Jack had just been introduced to the art. But everyone was willing to let him take the lead and all of the risks. Why? Was she really so weak? If so, how had she survived so long without him? I mean she’s part of the prophecy (or whatever) too. It smacked of paternalistic sexism…have to protect the precious, fragile female at all cost. Oh god, just gag me.

I did really appreciate Jersey Clifford in all of his poetry spewing badness. He felt like he had more depth than all of the other character combined. Cowboy and Lily had a lot of potential too. Similarly the interaction between Jack and his brother was thought provoking. Billy’s experience surely had to be the hardest of any other character. He deserves some credit.

It was hard to reconcile the ‘we have to save the world’ plot line with the ‘innocent love’ storyline. I suppose if I was 15 and didn’t know how much more life had to offer I might be able to relate to the importance of being a couple (holding hands, carrying her books, etc). But as an adult I found the whole thing too…too vanilla. Granted, I am an adult and this is a YA book (and I’d expect it to best appeal to the lower age brackets of the genre). But even if I could get excited about it, I have a hard time believing two people tasked with such a heavy destiny would stop in the middle of it to cuddle and declare their undying love. Not the time people.

My final and extremely inelegant say on the matter is that the book was alright and will likely appeal to Twilight‘s younger fan base.

Review of A.D. Stewart’s Black Pyramid

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I grabbed A.D. Stewart‘s Black Pyramid (Ancient Breeds, #1) off of the KDP free list. As I write this (Feb. 11), I notice that it is free again. Don’t know how long that will last, though.

Description from Amazon:
In a time, when SandWalkers fight BloodSeekers for supremacy, it’s kill or be killed!

Down through time, we thought the lost civilizations died out.
We were wrong…
Find out the truth…
The secrets of the pyramids are about to be revealed…
In the first story within the Ancient Breeds Series

Ancient Breeds Novel:

Melissa Ambers travels to Egypt with one question on her mind. Why me?

Entering the Black Pyramid with mixed feelings- unsure how or why the giant sandstone pyramid appeared out of thin air, she risks everything, her job, her reputation, and her life to unearth the mysteries within.

Entering the tomb, it becomes increasingly apparent that something or someone dwelling within the dark, confines of the Black Pyramid is trying to keep her from learning the secrets buried within.

Entrusted with the powers to protect the humans from total annihilation, Siaak, the keeper of the pyramid, must do everything within his powers to keep the evil vampire, Osiris, locked inside, and trespasser out!

When two humans force their way into his pyramid, he has no choice but to get rid of them! For if they unleash the leader of the BloodSeekers, there is nothing on this earth that can save them again!

Review:
I generally liked the book. Siaak’s genuine desire to do good in the face of evil was wonderful, while his willingness to also kill mercilessly when needed provided a well-rounded understanding of his motivations. Melissa was a little firecracker. She was smart, witty, and fearless. Much like Siaak, I found her endless chatter annoying at times, not always though. I often thought she had insightful questions and could relate to her constant desire for more information, but there were times when lives were on the line (often her own), and I thought, ‘Jesus woman, shut the hell up.’

I really wanted to see the two of them complete each other. There was very little sex in the book, which is fine. But it seemed like, though Siaak could talk a good game (some of the things he says/describes are toe-curling, in a good way), they never seemed to smolder. They didn’t seem particularly impassioned. While his whole fangy thing was smexy, there wasn’t a lot of information (beyond his adamant denials) about the difference between his Sandwalker breed and the vampiric Bloodseeker breed. I kind of got it, but you just have to pick tidbits up along the way, and I never understood where the second breed came from. Was it a mutation, a divine intervention, always been there?

The side characters were fun too. Siaak’s brothers were each good in their own way. They filled the obligatory laid-back jester with unexpected wisdom and brooding, emotionally damaged, hostile roles. I look forward to each of their books ’cause you know that there’ll eventually be one for each of them. Then there was Mark and Elizabeth and the baddies…all good.

I did have a little trouble anchoring myself in time. The book started in Ancient Egypt, but one of the characters can time-travel, so there were a number of modern references that threw me for a loop. Plus, when two of them reenter the storyline after what I think was thousands of years, they leaped right into life (they knew people, one had a job, they had homes, etc.) I couldn’t figure out how that worked, even if time travel was involved.

There were a lot of brand references (Kindle Fire HD, iPhone, iPod, Tic Tacs, Ray Bans, and that’s before even getting to the clothing & shoes) that felt really forced. Why not just an e-reader (or even just a Kindle) or sunglasses? I did appreciate all of the pop culture references, though. Some of them really made me laugh.

In the end, I’d be happy to read another one should it be published. And for the record, I’ve seen a number of covers for this book, and this one (the one with three stacked guys on the front) is by far my favorite. Honestly, it’s the reason I picked the book up in the first place. Yummy.

Book Review of Smolder (Dragon Souls #1), by Penelope Fletcher

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I grabbed Penelope Fletcher‘s first Dragon Soul book, Smolder from Smashwords, probably during the Summer/Winter sale last year. I found that I had been really ignoring my Smashwords books lately. I’d largely forgotten about them. So, I’m making a point of reading some of them now.

Description from Goodreads:
Wounded, a dragon drops from the sky to crash in front of Marina in an explosion of fire. She does the only reasonable thing a woman can do – she saves his life. Marina knows any moment may be her last, yet she cannot deny the connection between her and the alluring creature. When fierce dragon lords appear, leading a dangerous assassin to their hiding place, the truth about her dragon is unveiled. The consequences of falling for a beast gifts Marina wonders never before seen … in this world

Review:
Penelope Fletcher’s Smolder is an entertaining read if you are willing to suspend any expectation of realistic behaviour (and I don’t just mean because it is fantasy). Marina and Koen are another stunning example of insta-love, granted it’s also a case of instant hate too. The whole scenario is made more ridiculous by the fact that she is COMPLETELY unfazed by the fact that he is a dragon. This is where my sense of realism is stretched beyond it’s brink. Marina isn’t afraid of anything. She waltzes right into a natural cataclysm of mythical proportion, challenges a dragon several sizes bigger and far more ferocious than herself, falls in love with him, crosses dimensions for him (him who she has known less than 36 hours by best approximation), finds that she’s a wealthy member of the royalty, ignores social protocols, gets everything she wants, adopts her own assassin, and expects to win a challenge after training for one week when her opponents have trained their entire lives. It’s simply too much. Marina is too brash, to fearless, and too loyal to a man she just met…wait she’s willing to throw her whole life away to be with Koen but falls in love/lust with Daniil too. Seems a little weak-willed to me. But still it’s entertaining enough if you just roll with the punches.

Honestly, even though she is largely too much of just about everything she is also really funny. This kept me reading even when I wanted to yell ‘yeah right they would let you get away with that!’ or ‘Oh, how convenient for you.’ Koen is noble, but you don’t see much of his personality. It is too buried in being honourable and duty bound, but Daniil and Nikolai are fabulous side kicks. They made the book worth reading.

I was even willing to ignore the book’s desperate need for an editor, because though noticeable it wasn’t all that distracting. What I was not willing to overlooks is the fact that it ends on a cliffhanger…no that isn’t right. I don’t consider it a cliffhanger. Yes, the final page of the book is ultra suspenseful, but it isn’t an ending. Marina is literally halfway through the quest she set out on. The book ends as she rushes headlong into the first challenge, the challenge that half the book builds up to. That’s not a cliffhanger, that’s half of a book! Yes ,Smolder is appropriately long, at roughly 250 pages, but it’s only half a story. When did this become the accepted norm? It pisses me off. If I take the time to read 250 pages I expect some sort of conclusion as a payoff before having to wait for the second instalment. I didn’t get that here and I am not a happy camper. Still, I want to know how the story ends so should the second one (Burn) come out before I forget about having read this one I will pick it up.