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A Wicked Hunger

Book Review of Kiersten Fay’s A Wicked Hunger (Creatures of Darkness, #1)

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A Wicked Hunger

Author, Kiersten Fay sent me an ecopy of her PNR novel A Wicked Hunger.

Description from Goodreads:
A hundred years after vampires revealed themselves to the masses, the world is still recovering from the hysteria and war that devastated much of the Earth. And though peace has been brokered between the human and vampire nations, it is tumultuous at best.

Orphaned at the age of ten, Coraline Conwell has struggled to survive a turbulent existence growing up alone on the harsh streets. Until a wealthy man provides an escape from her vagrant life by offering his hand in marriage. Out of place in the upper-crust world, Cora has done her best to adapt to her new role as wife, but when her husband is brutally murdered, she is ripped from her secure life at the hands of the Vampire Enforcement Agency.

Now her survival teeters on the whim of a brutally handsome vampire named Mason as she is hunted by those who would see her dead. She must keep unwanted desires for the sexy vampire from leading her down a dangerous path while she discovers there is more to this world, and herself, than she could have ever imagined.

Review:
I generally really enjoyed this book and I’ll get to the reasons why in a moment. But before I do, I have to rant a moment and say I was leaning toward giving this book four stars right up until I reached the end and it didn’t end. Seriously! WTF? I understand that as part of a series some threads have to be left open in order to link the books together, but nothing concluded in this book. NOTHING. In fact, a brand new character was introduced on essentially the last page. THE LAST PAGE! You just can’t do that and expect readers not to get irate. You just can’t. **Deep breath**

What I did like was the writing. It’s smooth and easy to read. I noticed one or two misused words and/or typos, but very few. I also thought that Mason was to die for. I adore seeing a tough guy go all weak at the knees over a female. Cora was an interesting mix of frightened and strong willed. I liked her well enough. I even found Knox to be a curious character and he appealed to me. However, unless he ties in and becomes integral to the plot in later books, the drama around him read very much like a pointless distraction that diluted the storyline. The time would have been far better spent staying on track with the original plot-line (which was essentially dropped, BTW) and actually wrapping something up, IMO.

So my final word on the matter is that A Wicked Hunger was an interesting read that left me incredibly unsatisfied at the end. It’s well written with some engaging characters, but I just really need a conclusion of some sort if I’m going to walk away happy.

Blood Brothers

Book Review of Blood Brothers, by M.F. Soriano

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Blood Brothers

Author, M.F. Soriano sent me a Smashwords coupon for a copy of his first full-length novel, Blood Brothers. I’ve also seen it on the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:

Ostracized by society because of the birthmark that mars his face, Grillis Bloodborn has lived all of his short life in a cottage in the forest, cutting wood and tending pigs. Upon the death of his grandmother, the only family he has ever known, he sets out on a quest to find favor with the Gods for her soul. Grillis’s travels bring him to a city where a young trash-picker named Athemon has just begun to discover the power to punish the men who have made his life a hell. As fate draws the two youths together, they learn that payback comes with a price of its own. Meanwhile, in the depths of the unconquered wilderness a young mystic named Verlvik begins to experience a series of miracles and visions… and the visions lead toward Athemon.

Review:

This book was a pleasure to read. Soriano’s writing has a beautifully lyrical aspect to it. It occasionally borders on ‘purple prose’, but far more often simply engenders powerful and evocative imagery in the reader (or at least this reader). There are passages in this book that I would have loved even if completely disassociated from the strong story they were encompassed in.

As wonderful as the writing is, it was the characters that really drew me in. Grillis, Athemon and Verlvik are each marvellous in their own way. Each possesses an immense personal strength, while also displaying notable weaknesses. They balance each other in a truly meaningful way, even as they themselves are largely unaware of it. They each also managed to retain a certain childlike innocence even as they were forced to make decisions and act as adults.

Though the characters were human, pictsee and caprine there was a definite ‘we’re all the same, really’ theme to the book that could easily be read as an anti-rascism allegory. This is always nice to see when not so heavy-handed as to overshadow the story. It wasn’t here. It was just pleasant background noise.

Though it worked here, I always have a hard time engaging the flow of a story told from multiple POVs, even when consistently contained within their own chapters. I find it stutters a bit in my mind. (I’m not sure how else to describe it.) I also thought that the enemy to be overcome was a little flat. Sure, it was evil incarnate and all, but there was no sense of grey to give it any depth. While I had no trouble understanding why they needed to be defeated, I was given no real understanding of why they did what they did or how they’d become as evil as they were. They were a fairly cliché opponent. Lastly, the book is really quite violent and fairly gory. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but is worth noting, especially since I think it will work well as an upper YA book.

Be that as it may, I still really quite enjoyed the book and will happily pick up more of Soriano’s work in the future.

Blue Moon Rising

Book Review of Natalie Herzer’s Blue Moon Rising (The Patroness, #1)

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Blue Moon RisingI downloaded a copy of Natalie Herzer‘s Blue Moon Rising (The Patroness, #1) from the Amazon KDP list. At the time of posting, it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
Maiwenn Cadic doesn’t have a quiet and normal life. 
This week won’t be any different.

Being the Patroness of Paris and protecting its inhabitants is a full time job but unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills and so Maiwenn tries her best to make a living as a down-on-her luck private eye for odd cases.

When five shapeshifters end up dead, she knows it’s bad news and has to call in The Council. They immediately send their assassin Kylian ‘The Killer’ Tremaine, a typical shapeshifter who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and seems to see everything female as a damsel in distress – which Maiwenn is really not. 

Together they will not only have to overcome their prejudices and obstacles in the form of a trigger-happy bounty hunter and a hungry rogue, but they will also have to trust each other in order to solve the murder before more bodies pile up.

Review:

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Blue Moon Rising is a fun, clean read that reminded me a little bit of Kim Harrison‘s The Hollows series. The plot is fairly basic. Maiwenn has inherited the task of protecting the people of Paris from all paranormal threats. So, she basically patrols the city, looking for trouble. This provided a lot of opportunities for the reader to be told interesting titbits about Paris, its history, and tourist attractions. It also allowed for a number of otherwise unconnected adventures. And while I enjoyed some of this, I also found myself increasingly irritated on two fronts.

First, I thought some of the history lessons felt forced and caused the narrative to drag a bit. Secondly, and more importantly, I had a real issue with the obvious question of language. Maiwenn was born and raised in Paris. She’s a native Parisian and would therefore, obviously, speak French. As would almost everyone else in the city that she would encounter. However, she’s very obviously meant to be speaking English…to everyone, even the other French people. What’s worse, the American who had never been to Paris has no linguistic challenge to overcome, but there is no indication that he is speaking French either, even to the French.

This is all highlighted by the fact that greetings are often said in French, and then the conversation continues in English. “Bonjour monsieur, bla bla bla in English.” Or when surprised, Maiwen rattles off a French sentence or two, and on one to two occasions, someone needed a translation. If not for the times that French is used, thereby indicating that it isn’t used at the other times, I might have been able to just assume all conversation was in the appropriate language. I could stretch my suspension of belief far enough for that. But that obviously wasn’t the case. So, I’m left asking when France adopted English as its national language.

I did enjoy the romantic tension, though I might have appreciated a little closure on that front, and Maiwenn is an admirably strong female character with a whole slew of interesting sidekicks. She did seem to consistently overcome adversity with ease, and more than one baddie is dispatched with almost no trouble at all.  There were also some editing issues, but for the most part, I really quite enjoyed the book.