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awakening nilles

Book Review: Awakening, by Melanie Nilles

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I’ve owned a copy of Melanie Nilles‘ Awakening since in 2018, though it had a different cover back then. I believe it is now a perma-freebie (or it just happens to be free right now), but I think I won a copy before it went free. (I have no real memory of any of that, but I have it marked as “won” on Goodreads. Thus all the “I believes” and “I thinks.” I’m not 100% certain.)

awakening melanie nilles

Lilly has been marked for death by daemons from a hidden world, a place known as the Shadow Realm. Within her has awakened the spirit of their enemy, one of the luriel. Such beings are myths to her, but one man is out to prove that they exist. The daemon slayer, Mychel, will introduce her to a world of shadows and light hiding beyond the comfort of science and technology, where ancient myths are real and an eternal war rages on, a war in which she has now been conscripted to fight.

One daemon is doing his best to destroy her before that happens. In human form, Darrac is able to get close to her and soon realizes that she is different—through Lilly, an ancient power has revived, a terrible power than can end the war…by eliminating both luriel and daemons. But destroying that power would mean sacrificing the one who has changed his heart.

Time is running out as the luriel within Lilly matures and her powers grow. One choice will determine the fate of two realms.

my review

Mawage.
Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday.
Mawage, that bwessed awangment,
that dweam wifin a dweam…
And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva…
So tweasure your wuv

Let me tell you a story of marriage. A week ago I noticed that I own several books essentially titled Awakening, seven of them were unread. So, I set myself a challenge to read them all. I even cleverly titled it the Awakening Challenge…OK, maybe not so cleverly. When I told my husband about it, he laughed and said, “You know you’ll DNF at least one of those, right?” I responded, “Well, I certainly won’t NOW!” Because I dislike not finishing books generally and I hate doing it during a challenge (it always leaves me feeling like I didn’t really complete it). But to DNF a book and prove my husband right? THE HORROR! There is no chance any book in my Awakening Challenge will go unfinished.

But then along came Melanie Nilles’ Awakening, the third Awakening book to be read in my challenge, and I could tell very early on that this book and I would not get along. I wanted to DNF it at about page 25 and again on every page after that. But I persisted, finally finishing it by the strength of my stubborn determination not to let the marital unit get a free “I told you so” out of the deal.

I think Nilles had an interesting kernel of an idea, but the emotional whiplash kills the book. The main character constantly goes back and forwards. “I saw a monster…no, no, that’s not possible.” “I miss Rian…no, don’t think of that.” “I feel safe with him…I can’t trust him.” On and on and on and on and on, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. The whole first third of the book is nothing but repeats of this cycle. All of it is worsened by the fact that Nilles apparently lacks the ability to write emotions subtly. It all just hits you in the face and Lilly comes off badly for it.

Then there are all the truly stupid decisions Lilly makes, prioritizing things that make no sense. And there is her desperation for a man, any man. It’s pitiful and uncomfortable and made me dislike her A LOT. Darrac (even outside of being a demon, which was super obvious and unbelievable that Lilly didn’t believe) was emotionally manipulative and a bad boyfriend. But still Lilly clung to him like he was more important than her own life (literally).

But worst of all, I think, is the way everything was so repetitive. The narrator would tell you something was possible, then the ‘good guys’ would say, “I’m afraid this is going to happen.” Then the villains would have a conversation saying, “This is my plan.” Then it would happen. I’m just grateful we didn’t have to also get an “Ah-ha, this is how I did it” or “I was afraid that would happen” recap too.

All in all, I feel like the book did improve as it went along. But by that time I was so put off by the whole thing that I just wanted to trash it and move on.

awakening nilles

fury

Book Review – Fury: The Awakening, by R.E. Sargent

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I picked up a freebie code for a copy of Fury: The Awakening (The Scorned, #1), by R.E. Sargent. I’m considering this a bonus Awakening. It doesn’t actually meet the specifications of my Awakening Challenge, since the name isn’t simply Awakening. But I had chores to do today and wanted to listen to an audio book, so I figured I might as well stay on theme.

Fury- The Awakening

Stephanie Duran hoped for the American dream – a husband, a family, a house with a white-picket fence – but every man she ever trusted betrayed her. Forsaken by her last lover, Stephanie finally understands that the American dream will never be her reality. Devastated and emotionally destroyed, she pours all her anger-fueled energy into remodeling her new house – the one part of her dream she could control – when an unexplained phenomenon bestows upon her the mysterious power to right wrongs before they happen. Suddenly empowered and in control of fate, Stephanie finds herself immersed in a world of strange events and discovers too late that she has unwittingly unleashed pure evil.

my review

Fury: The Awakening….or Fury: Birth Of a Failed Vigilante as I would rename it. Good lord, I was pretty much bored for the entirety of this audio book. By the end, I was listening to it at 1.5x normal speed, something that pretty much destroys the listening experience (which would have been fine otherwise) and also something I generally never do. But I just wanted to be done.

The book started strongly, with the main character finding out her fiance is cheating on her and responding appropriately. But after that it took a sharp left into blands-ville. She buys the house and the reader sits through chapter after chapter of her fixing everything up. *Yawn*

Then the Quantum-Leap style time/space hops start and the reader sits through the endless tedious details of her figuring everything else, going on hops, learning to shoot, fight, etc, and then going on one last big hop before everything comes to an end. There’s no over-arcing story line to make this interesting. It’s just a progression of this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened until the end.

And the reader never even learns the story behind the original owner of the house or how the house because the gateway (or whatever) it apparently is. It’s all just dropped. All in all, the writing is fine (though the author sucks at writing female-female dialogue) but I was, as I said, bored by the story.

fury sargent

 

the lowest realm

Book Review: The Lowest Realm, by Amy-Alex Campbell

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I received a $5 Amazon credit for completing the New Year Kindle Challenge. I posted on Twitter that I was going to use the money to buy books written by my followers. As you can see from the subsequent tweets, that didn’t garner very much attention…any at all really. But I still did as promised and bought two books, Through the Black Mirror, which you can find reviewed here, and The Lowest Realm, by Amy-Alex Campbell.

about the bookthe lowest realm

Life on an offshore oil rig is grueling hard work. For Nika the hard work, isolation and discipline is ideal.

On the eve of flying back to the mainland for a two week break, disaster strikes, and Nika is thrown into darkness.

When he awakes in a strange world, with no memory of his past, he finds himself in the presence of monks, who offer to help, on one condition. Nika must deliver an urgent message to the king, and in return, the mysterious monks will help him recall his memories and find a way home.

Instead, Nika is sent on a long journey with his new friend Freyne, and the spoilt Princess Iryna, to fulfill a prophecy that will restore balance to the world.

Nika must adjust to more than just a new world; as his body undergoes a transformation he does not understand, he must also deal with being hunted, forbidden love, mancery, and gods he’s never heard of.

This wasn’t horrible, but it was just exceptionally tedious. It’s almost 400 pages long and very very little ever actually happens. But I can tell you what every building in every town looks like, what color the napkins at the dinners are, about every single bath and change of clothing the characters make as they travel, and travel, and travel. Plus, the author really missed their chance to make a ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ joke about Freyne’s pack. He pulled everything from a spit and small mortar and pestle, to towels and changes of clothing out of that thing.

So little happens, in fact, that the author had to add some casually institutionalized homophobia (with threats of castration and dismemberment) and near-rapes of female characters AS FILLER. Both could be removed from the book without making any changes to the plot. ZERO. It was 100% unneeded, and for me at least, unappreciated.

Additionally, I found many of the characters shallow and poorly drafted. The female characters were especially cliched, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM, even random women met along the way. CLICHED.

Having said all that, Campbell had a sweet story to tell about found family and sacrifice. As I said, not horrid, I’m I’m awful glad to be done with it.

the lowest realm