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Book Review: A Devious Descent, by A.A. Powers

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I purchased a copy of A Devious Descent from the author, A.A. Powers.

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When light fades and shadows play, the realm eater comes to take you away.

Frankie Hart thought she was as human as they come—until her brother vanishes, and she unravels a truth that shatters her world. Not only is she half-demon, but she is also the key to a prophecy that could either save or obliterate the human realm.

Zarreth, a demon from the Dark Realm, takes it upon himself to hunt Frankie and prevent the prophecy from unfolding. However, the longer he watches her, the more he becomes drawn to her in ways he can’t understand. His obsession grows when Frankie’s search comes to a dead-end, and she turns to Zarreth for help. Could she be his fated mate?

Together, Frankie and Zarreth must navigate a world where allegiances shift, and enemies lurk at every corner. Will Frankie succumb to the darkness inside her and become the instrument of destruction foretold? Or will their bond be enough to keep the darkness at bay?

my review

This was pretty lackluster. I mean it was fine, just kinda milquetoast. Despite my copy being over 350 pages, not very much actually happened. (I say my copy because it’s double-spaced—who does that—and I’m assuming not all are.) I liked the characters well enough. The world seems like it could be interesting. There’s some humor in there and some easy LGBT representation. I appreciate the cross-gender platonic friendships, even if the author seemed to feel obligated to make the friend gay in order to see it as a possibility. But the story itself? Meh. It’s inconsistent. There are plot holes. The emotional elements are conveyed with the subtlety of a hammer. I didn’t feel the love (or even the lust) develop, so it felt unsupported. Characters do stupid things for plot progression when perfectly logical alternatives that make a lot more sense are available to them. The end is predictable, etc. I’ve certainly read a lot worse. But…yeah, meh.

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Book Review: Beauty & the Necromancer, by Kate Seger

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Kate Seger‘s Beauty and the Necromancer kept passing my TikTok feed. I suppose I was influenced because I decided to get a copy and give it a read. To my great surprise, I discovered that I already owned the series. I think I must have picked it up in a freebie event at some point. I love it when this happens!

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When Beauty steals into the cursed lands of Eldritch Manor to save her starving family, she finds herself ensnared by its master— Darius, the dreaded Necromancer. Amidst a crumbling gothic manor where the dead dance and lost souls wail, an unlikely and dangerous passion ignites between captive and captor.

Beauty sees humanity buried beneath Darius’s monstrous exterior, while Darius, enthralled by her defiant spirit, remembers the man he once was. Together, they seek to break Darius’s curse. But vengeful forces in Beauty’s village soon threaten to tear the lovers apart.

my review

Sadly, this was a flop for me. So much so that even though I have book two, I’m not going to bother reading it. I feel like I’ve done my due diligence by at least finishing this one. I have two primary complaints…well, three, but the third is a personal preference kind of thing.

The first is the writing. It’s readable, I don’t mean to say it isn’t. But it’s the purplest purple prose that ever purple prosed. For me to complain about this is a sign of how purple it is, because I’m generally pretty tolerant of purple prose. Seger’s writing surpassed even my generous allowance for flowery speech.

Second, I’m unsure where the line between copying and retelling lies. However, this definitely falls much more closely to a carbon copy of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast than any retelling that uses the fairytale as its source material. Sure, Seger changed the names (And we won’t even touch how blunt changing Belle’s name to Beauty is in this scenario or that her mother’s name is Marybelle). The beast is a shadowy necromancer, rather than furry, but the plot points align precisely. So exactly, in fact, that by the end, I was literally calling them. “It’s time to go to the garden now.” “It’s time for Gaston (Harrow) to show back up.” “It’s time for the angry Beast to make an appearance.” Honestly, while I don’t think this is actually the case, I almost beauty and the necromancer photofeel like this reads as if Seger gave ChatGPT a “Write me a Beauty and the Beast story” prompt and this is the result*.

Third, and on the personal preference front, this is far too sappy and sweet toward the end. This is an issue for me, both because it happens far too quickly and there isn’t enough substance to support it, and because it’s not believable (or for me, pleasant to read).

*After I wrote this review, I googled “Does author Kate Seger use AI to write?” This is what came up. So, maybe I wasn’t so off the mark, after all. Here, the author claims to use AI to revise already-written scenes that she believes could be improved. I felt, in reading this book, that AI outlined or structured it, plotted it out. The book feels AI-generated to me. But I’m not dropping any sort of allegation. I’m a university student, and I know far too many people writing essays that AI-detectors are calling AI-generated because they know how to use an em dash, etc. (Hell, I use Grammarly, and I swear sometimes it wants to rewrite my sentences so extremely that it could probably be considered AI.)  I’m just saying the book/plot feels the same as many AI-generated pieces of writing do.

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Book Review: Wake and Fade, by Lisa McMann

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Some years back, I picked up a second-hand copy of Lisa McMann‘s Fade at a charity shop somewhere because it was signed. I do love a signed book. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, least of all that it is 2nd in the series. Well, as I’ve challenged myself to read my physical TBR books this year (and have, so far, managed to stick to it), I borrowed Wake from the library. I reviewed them as I finished them.

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For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people’s dreams is getting old. Especially the falling dreams, the naked-but-nobody-notices dreams, and the sex-crazed dreams. Janie’s seen enough fantasy booty to last her a lifetime.

She can’t tell anybody about what she does they’d never believe her, or worse, they’d think she’s a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn’t want and can’t control.

Then she falls into a gruesome nightmare, one that chills her to the bone. For the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else’s twisted psyche. She is a participant.

my review

Wake:

This was a seriously quick read. I started it after dinner, and by the time I went to bed around 11, I’d finished it and about a 1/3 of Fade (book 2). And to my complete surprise (because I’m sometimes iffy about YA), after a somewhat slow start, I enjoyed it. I liked the almost diary-like setup (part of why it reads so fast) and the main characters. I found the side characters to be pretty clichéd and unexciting. However, the book primarily focuses on the main character, who is a practical sort of girl in a tough situation, and her male counterpart, who is particularly endearing in his caregiving.

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Fade:

I thought this was a finely written book, but I didn’t like it anywhere near as much as book one. I suffer from pretty severe rape-fatigue when it comes to rape in the books I read for entertainment and…yeah, I could go the rest of my life without reading one more book centered on men taking advantage of girls. So, the plot was a flop for me. But I can still acknowledge that I like the character and her love interest and appreciate McMann’s YA writing. There, technically, is a 3rd book in the series (and the library probably has it). But I feel like this book stopped at a good place for a break.

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JKR Books: Wake & Fade