Tag Archives: urban fantasy

Drawing Dead

Book Review of Drawing Dead (Dana McIntyre Must Die #1), by S.M. Reine

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I picked up a freebie copy of Drawing Dead, by SM Reine from Amazon.

Description:

The vampire slayer is turning into a vampire? Over her dead body. 

Dana McIntyre has been bitten by a master vampire. She’s infected with the venom. And after killing hundreds of vampires to keep Las Vegas safe, she’d rather die than turn. 

There might be a cure. But the only way to get it is through Nissa Royal, a vampire with close ties to the masters of Las Vegas. Nissa is dangerous — too dangerous to be allowed to live, much less work alongside. 

But if Dana dies, vampires win Vegas. If she doesn’t die, she becomes one of the bloodless. The cure’s her only chance. In this deadly game of hold ’em, Dana’s drawing dead, and whatever happens next, there’s no changing her losing hand. Dana only knows one thing: If she’s going down, she’s taking as many vampires as possible on her way out… 

Review:

I was pretty disappointed in this book. But largely because I went in with really high hopes. I bought it because the heroine is a fat, butch lesbian and how often do they get to be the heroes in a story…an action hero no less? It wasn’t the diversity aspect of the story that let me down though. Dana is just as the cover suggests (and YES she even got to be fat and butch on the cover!). She’s married to a butch-ish woman. So, Reine didn’t even play into the ‘one of them has to be femme’ trap. I love that. The police chief is a ball-busting trans woman, and it’s engaged in the book, not just dropped in as a token. And not all the other characters are straight, white, cis, etc. So, I’m not disappointed to have bought a book that includes a lot of things I wish more books incorporated (Positively represented fat women on book covers? Hell yes, more!).

Unfortunately, what let me down was that Dana is so darned unlikeable. She’s rude and vile and dismissive of people who care for her. I don’t mean that as any sort of ‘proper women don’t act that way.’ Heck yes, give me more cursing, belching, sarcastic women. I mean it in the sense that she’s almost cruel to a wife that loves her, prioritizing her own wishes over heartfelt pleas. She snarks off to people who are actively trying to help her, as if they are being unreasonable, etc. 

What’s more, Dana is basically suicidal for a large part of this book, which means she runs head-long into battles with so little regard for her own life that it felt too much like a miracle that she continued to survive. Heroes/heroines that are so perfect in battle that they never even consider fear is are flat and uninteresting, IMO. 

All in all, Reine’s writing is fine. And despite there being 40 books in this universe (as of the publication of Drawing Dead, the book is readable as a standalone. But I wouldn’t go so far as to claim you don’t feel the lack of those other books. There were several decisions important in this book that are made based on the events of other books, and you notice.

dying for a living

Book Review of Dying for a Living, by Kory M. Shrum

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I picked up an ebook copy of Kory M. Shrum‘s Dying for a Living as an Amazon Freebie in 2015. Then, I purchased the Audible version in my recent audiobook buying spree

Description from Goodreads:

On the morning before her 67th death, it is business as usual for Jesse Sullivan: meet with the mortician, counsel soon-to-be-dead clients, and have coffee while reading the latest regeneration theory. Jesse dies for a living, literally. As a Necronite, she is one of the population’s rare 2% who can serve as a death replacement agent, dying so others don’t have to. Although each death is different, the result is the same: a life is saved, and Jesse resurrects days later with sore muscles, new scars, and another hole in her memory.

But when Jesse is murdered and becomes the sole suspect in a federal investigation, more than her freedom and sanity are at stake. She must catch the killer herself—or die trying.

Review:

This was OK. That’s the best I can say for it. It wasn’t bad, but nothing in it lit me up either. It’s and interesting world Shrum created and I appreciated the bi-sexual lead, but I also found Jesse’s constant sarcasm annoying and I often found her responses to things stupid. Here’s an example, someone is trying to kill you, you know this. They’ve almost succeeded once already, in fact. A friend calls and frantically tells you that people are coming for you and you have to get out of the house fast. Do you drop everything and run or do you whine about how you just made a sandwich and could leaving wait? Hmmmm, this is apparently a hard decision because Jesse did the latter. There were several similar instances. There were also a couple ‘well, isn’t that convenient’ moments. The final one with Lane, especially. So, while the book is competently written, it wasn’t a winner for me.

Now, a word of the narration by Hollie Jackson. She did a fine job in the narrative parts of the story and I thought she did a fine job with Jesse and the male characters, as well. However, each and every other female in the book is voiced with such saccharine, borderline teasing tones that I wanted to slap them all. None felt natural. Never have a met a woman who actually speaks like all of these women do.

Dark Siren

Book Review of Dark Siren (Half-Lich #1) by Lee Dignam & Katerina Martinez

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I picked Dark Siren (by Lee Dignam and Katerina Martinez) as a freebie in 2017, but I upgraded to the Audible version in my recent audiobook buying binge.

Description from Goodreads:

A nightmarish realm. A city of monsters. One girl’s soul caught in the middle.  

Supernatural bounty hunter Alice Werner loves her job. She gets paid the big bucks to take down her targets and doesn’t ask her clients too many questions as long as the money’s good. But when a girl goes missing and the case feels all too familiar, Alice can’t help but act.

Concern for the girl’s safety draws her into a risky case. Compassion keeps her involved when the stakes begin to rise. Desperation forces her to call on an old flame for help. Despite their unfinished past, Alice and Isaac Moreau, a prominent Mage, must work together to save the girl.

When clues reveal more than meets the eye, Alice must face her deepest fears and confront demons from her past to protect the victim, and herself, from a fate worse than death.

Review:

This didn’t work for me. I thought it too much depended on past events that weren’t well integrated into the plot, the characters were fairly shallow—such that I never felt I got to know them—and the writing held far too many similes for comfort. Further, there were several instances of foreshadowing that never came to fruition in the book and the whole thing never really concludes. All in all, I wasn’t impressed.

Complicating matters further for me was that I also didn’t care for Laurel Schroeder’s narration style. Her intonation and speech patterns annoyed me. If I had to guess at the cause, without comparing it to the written text, I’d say she over-emphasized commas. This meant that instead of there being a brief, breath-length pause in the middle of a sentence or list, there were whole full stops. Everything felt broken up. This may be a preference thing and not bother others, but it annoyed the heck out of me.