Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsHuh? How does this book have so many high reviews?
Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2016
Gah! Somewhere around a third of the way thru this book I started wondering if it was worth it. At 80%, I gritted my teeth, committed that far, I held onto some dim hope that this author was heading somewhere that might possibly redeem this plotline. She wasn't. Naturally, it's a cliffhanger, albeit a weak one, and I fear the next installment won't even be salvagable. This book was painful to finish in so many ways. Here's a few of them.
1st - (and one of the less heinous annoyances of this book) The immature language. The dialogue is weak and often juvenile. "Boohoo," says the big bad fallen angel. Really? It never gets better.
2nd - The storyline was cohesive at first, but quickly became a jumbled mess, with so many time jumps within pages and POV shifts it left my head spinning. Too much chaos and too little clarity.
3rd - The author can't seem to commit to building a dimensional character, but instead expects the reader to make great imaginative leaps to catch up. There is no depth to the character development, nor to the 'relationship' between the male and female protags. All they can think about is their genitals when in one another's company, and apparently in a weak attempt to create tension, comes up with excuses to keep them apart. Seriously, the characters are so flimsy, it makes me sad. They had SO much potential at the beginning, what happened? For example, we are introduced to someone with a few paragraphs, then time jump a year, and they're besties. Really? Hard on the ol' suspension of disbelief. I want to care about these characters, but they aren't given enough depth, description, or smart dialogue to inspire even an inkling of sympathy. The further the book goes, the more discombobulating and ineffectual they become. Their motives are solid, but their decisions are just plain dumb. I don't want to spoil anything, but for a "Sherlock," Phoenix doesn't do a single intelligent thing in the whole book. And a succubus that doesn't like (and is scared of sex) for at least a decade, but wears skimpy little red dresses for no apparent reason. Not convincing.
4th - One of the 1st tenets of writing: Show, don't tell. The inner monologues of each character is over-the-top with 'telling.' This book is rife with it, and became painful frankly. Unless you include that the main protag vomits every time she gets a little stressed, that is. I guess thats a 'show' unless you consider it was written out something like "She was so scared she vomited." Again. We get it. She's a tough girl that barfs at everything.
And the the redundancies. Wow. They just kept coming. It's like the author doesn't respect the reader's memory or intellect. You pose a mystery, we will ponder it. You don't need to batter it into our heads that so-and-so is "wondering what that means." Then the very next page, they're still obsessing over the same mundane thing. We get that the character is confused, or they wouldn't be in this idiotic position to begin with. It just became wasted words and filler. Pounding repetitively into your reader's head does not help.
There's also continuity issues, which are more irritating than truly detrimental. I read that this book has been rereleased, but I feel like the author lost track of details in the story. We have these two powerful seers, supposed to always be right, but the protags constantly find themselves in bad positions, NOT that the author has the grace to tell us how they got there. Nope, we just get to guess at it. "One year later..." That is NOT storytelling. That's riddling, which is kind of fun and cryptic in small doses, but eventually grates on your nerves when that's ALWAYS the approach.
Deus ex machina, anyone? Every. Single. Chapter. *sigh*
I'm sorry to be so critical, but with all the 5 star reviews, I had high expectations. I've read worse books, but this one was like a sci-fi B-movie without an editor. So sad. I truly can't concieve how this book got such rave reviews.
