{"id":26343,"date":"2023-05-12T09:16:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T14:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/?p=26343"},"modified":"2024-07-13T09:48:19","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T14:48:19","slug":"monsters-miseries-ak-koonce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/monsters-miseries-ak-koonce\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Monsters &#038; Miseries series, by A.K. Koonce"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up a freebie copy of <a href=\"https:\/\/akkoonce.com\/\">A.K. Koonce<\/a>&#8216;s the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Monsters-Miseries-Boxset-Forbidden-Fated-ebook\/dp\/B096G2QZ9Z?ref_=ast_author_mpb\">Monsters &amp; Miseries<\/a> series omnibus (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B0836FGYMP?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&amp;storeType=ebooks\">Hellish Fae, Sinless Demons, and Spiteful Creatures<\/a>) from Amazon.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-26345 \" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-covers.png\" alt=\"monsters and miseries covers\" width=\"539\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-covers.png 800w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-covers-300x149.png 300w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-covers-768x382.png 768w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-covers-624x310.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 539px) 100vw, 539px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>There\u2019s a dark secret inside of me. A monster clawing to get out.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I was thrown out of the fae world because of it. But I\u2019m back now. Three brooding demons and a sinful incubus returned me to my sweet little homeland. And I\u2019ll finish what I started all those years ago.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Sure, maybe my delicate fae features are twisting into spiraling horns and demonic eyes, but that won\u2019t stop me from righting my wrongs.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Queen of Hell might possess my body but the deadly vengeance in my blood is my own. The Prince will die by my hand for what he&#8217;s done.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>All I have to do is make sure the creature at the back of my mind doesn\u2019t kill me first.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-23887 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/theconallseries-my-review-300x58.png\" alt=\"my review\" width=\"140\" height=\"27\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/theconallseries-my-review-300x58.png 300w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/theconallseries-my-review.png 333w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 140px) 100vw, 140px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This was a bit of a whimpering fizzle for me; so much potential utterly wasted. The series started out well enough but then seemed to start spinning its wheels and repeating itself. It felt very unfocused.\u00a0 Whole elements of the plot disappeared and then reappeared with no explanation (I&#8217;m thinking Catherine); the characters were caricatures rather than characters; the editing needs another pass; the ending was a cop-out, and all the &#8220;fuckings&#8221; drove me nuts.<\/p>\n<p>Let me address this last one first, before anyone mistakes me for a pearl-clutcher. I curse like a sailor. I have no problem with foul language in books. But the use of fucking in this book is overwhelming. It barrelled right the fuck into redundant territory and kept fucking going. I got <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/CsHXOHpvRUx\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-26346\" src=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-photo-297x300.jpg\" alt=\"monsters and miseries photo\" width=\"188\" height=\"190\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-photo-297x300.jpg 297w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-photo-768x775.jpg 768w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-photo-624x630.jpg 624w, http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/monsters-and-miseries-photo.jpg 793w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 188px) 100vw, 188px\" \/><\/a>so tired of reading it. It just became a stutter in the narrative. But worse, every fucking character used it in exactly the same fucking way, which meant it did nothing to differentiate characters. They all sounded exactly the fucking same.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, and most importantly, there isn&#8217;t enough story here to carry 500+ pages and nowhere near enough sex to be called porn-without-plot. So, I was bored. Others&#8217; experiences may vary.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Other Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked up a freebie copy of A.K. Koonce&#8216;s the Monsters &amp; Miseries series omnibus (Hellish Fae, Sinless Demons, and Spiteful Creatures) from Amazon. There\u2019s a dark secret inside of me. A monster clawing to get out. I was thrown out of the fae world because of it. But I\u2019m back now. Three brooding demons [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":26344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2832,231,267,359,106,448,118,517,2680],"class_list":["post-26343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booksbook-review","tag-a-k-koonce","tag-book-review","tag-paranormal","tag-paranormal-romance","tag-pnr","tag-reverse-harem","tag-romance","tag-self-published","tag-why-choose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27991,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26343\/revisions\/27991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}