Twisted Kingdom

In this first of what looks to be an excellent series, Victorian England has vampires at every level of society, especially the higher ones, and they engage in incessant intrigue, power games, and casual oppression of the weak--activities, as we know, that are all too human. Numerous characters from literature and from history appear in both major and cameo roles. Spectacular fight scenes, stormy politics, and a serial vampire killer keep the action lively. A scholarly bibliography is included.

This was one of the most disappointing reads I've had in a long time. I had heard nothing but praise for this vampire novel but I don't understand why that is. The writing, IMO, was so bland and uninspiring I barely dragged through page 49 before I decided I could take no more. Mrs Newman seems to be in love with hyphens, so much so that I counted 11 on one page alone. So many words were hyphenated: new-born, un-dead, curly-haired, knee-tremblers, desk-banging, boot-leather, bread-knife, vampire-slayer,after-darks, tea-bowls...and on and on and on. It was distracting, to say the least. Too many sentences dragged on or made no sense and I found my mind wandering more than once. I couldn't care for any of the protagonists and I certainly didn't care to know just who the Silver Knife murderer was.

Maybe I can try and get into this another time but, for now, it's a DNF.

As Kailana said earlier this week, although "Kelley Armstrong" month is over, we still have reviews of her books in store! So here is the review of Haunted from Rhinoa from Rhinoa's Ramblings. You've pretty much figured out that we, gals at TK, were fans of Kelley Armstrong, so I thought it'd be nice to have an outsider's opinion! :D



Haunted - Kelley Armstrong
published by Orbit (2005)

Series: Women of the Otherworld series, Book 5

Genre - Horror, Fantasy
Rating - 4/5

Eve Levine - half-demon, black witch and devoted mother - has been dead for three years. She has a great house, an interesting love life and can't be killed again - which comes in handy when you've made as many enemies as Eve. Yes, the afterlife isn't too bad - all she needs to do is find a way to communicate with her daughter Savannah and she'll be happy.

But fate - or more exactly, the Fates - have other plans. Eve owes them a favour, and they're just called it in. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. She feeds on chaos and death, and is very good at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does anymore damage, but the Nix is a dangerous enemy - previous hunters have been sent mad in the process. As if that's not problem enough, it turns out that the only way to stop her is with an angel's sword. And Eve's no angel...

The fifth in the series which has Eve Levine (Savannah's mother) as the heroine despite the small issue of her being dead! Eve is called in to help the Fates capture the Nix, a viscious being that helps give people the confidence to commit rape, murder and torture. Three have already failed in the quest before Eve gets roped in.

This was possibly my favourite so far. There is lots of information about Eve (who seems to have been slightly misunderstood and misrepresented in the previous books...) and the whostworld (where apparently you can still enjoy physical relationships with other ghosts!). Eve is a great character, the ones with a dodge past always seem to make for more interesting lead roles, and she really contrasts with the horrible things that the Nix has been involved in. I liked using the Nix to explain how people were pushed over the edge to become serial killers and rapists. The addition of the angels, especially Trsiel worked really well in the scheme of the story as well.

Disturbingly good humour!

Savage Messiah: The Destinies of Blood and Stone by Robert Newcomb: 2.5 /5
published by Delrey in December 2005

This books is the first in the second trilogy of 3 planned trilogies to tell the story of the Blood & Stone. Confused? Simple, first there was a trilogy titled The Chronicles of Blood and Stone. Then we now have this new trilogy which continues where the last book left off. Two more books will round off the Destinies trilogy then finally we will have the Victories of Blood and Stone.

All told there are 9 books telling the story of Prince Tristan and I for once find it silly that it's divided into 3 trilogies.

Anyways, I must say I was extremely disappointed in this book. Seems I'm not the only one. Straight from Amazon we have the plot:

Set in the world of Eutracia, Newcomb's repetitive first volume in a new fantasy trilogy relies on the same gimmick as The Scrolls of the Ancients (2004), the final book in his Chronicles of Blood and Stone series. Once again a villain returns from the dead; Wulfgar, whom the heroic Tristan "killed" in The Scrolls of the Ancients, is now the all-powerful Enseterat, whose mastery of the dark magic of the Vagaries is enhanced by his direct contact with the ancient Heretics of the Guild. A more serious flaw is the book's system of magic. People are drawn toward the evil Vagaries or the good Vigors by the "lean" of their blood signatures. Magic can change this natural lean, but since characters gain their magical abilities not by study or practice or experimentation but by "forestallments" imbued into their blood, they lack free will. Newcomb's prose isn't strong enough to compensate for an uninspired adventure whose protagonists amount to mere automatons.

The characters are all very boring and one-dimensional. In fact, the only characters that intrigued me any where the assassin Satine and the villain Wulfgar. The heroes all seem to act impulsively as if this where the first time they faced an evil villain when in fact they've "been there" thrice before [in the previous trilogy]. From what I've read on those books, well, they seem to be just about a carbon copy of one another. I found myself not caring what happened to the heroes way before we even hit the middle of the book. After that I skimmed the rest simply to find out who got bumped off and how it was all wrapped up. It's a very bad sign when you are rooting for the bad guy simply because he seems the more alive of the bunch.

At first I thought I may want to find out just who the destined queen will be but, after having to skim just about half of the book I realized I don't care one bit just how this entire trilogy or series ends.

A migthy disappointing read.

This is such a great week! Two guest reviews in one week! LOL :D All right, let's be serious. The following guest review is by Katie from Rhinoa's Ramblings. The book reviewed is Moon Called by Patricia Briggs! I hope everyone enjoys!

(psst- the week is not over, contest is ending on Sunday!)


Moon Called - Patricia Briggs
Published by Ace Books, New York 2006

Rating: 4/5
Genre: Horror, Fantasy
Series: Book One in the Mercy Thompson series

Mercy Thompson's sexy next-door neightbour is a werewolf. She's tinkering with a VW bus at her machanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire.But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself... and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

A new series by Patricia Briggs about Witches, Werewolves, Vampires and Walkers. Mercedes (Mercy) is a Walker and can transform into a Coyote at will who was mostly raised by Werewolves. Since growing up she became a car mechanic sharing a back wall with a werewolf and fixing cars for local vampire Stefan. Her life changes when a newly Changed werewolf turns up on her doorstep looking for work.There are obvious parallels with the books by Kelley Armstrong. Both have a female lead character, a variety of supernatural creatures, danger lust and love and a smattering of violence. It did retain some originality and I preferred the characters in this book as they seemed somehow more real despite the supernatural element. I liked the idea of Mercy being a Walker and the stories about the Fae coming out in public was interesting.

At times though it seemed the author was over complicating the plot. It seemed she was trying to cram in a few too many twists, turns and ideas and could have perhaps toned it down nearer the end a little. There were also a couple of discrepencies eg only Bran was supposed to be able to communicate with other werewolves but it seemed Mercy as a coyote and a couple of the wolves could talk to others of their kind as well as humans. It was a little unclear.Overall though I really enjoyed this book and will definately be reading the next in the series.