What happened? I was VERY pleasantly surprised at how good the first book was, to the point that I had been eagerly waiting for this followup for montWhat happened? I was VERY pleasantly surprised at how good the first book was, to the point that I had been eagerly waiting for this followup for months. About one third of the way into the book, I was already struggling to stay engaged and could barely get through the entire thing. This book honestly felt like it was written by a completely different author! What changed? Was the first book just very well edited? Was this book rushed? No idea, but the difference is stark.
The writing style went from decent (not some amazingly beautiful prose, but just gets the job done) to a very elementary level, with cheesy and repetitive descriptions. As the reader, you feel caught in the middle of a LOT of navel gazing, whiny, wannabe angst from both sides. I say wannabe, because despite all the hand wringing about breaking the mate bond and the threat of death, at no point does it actually feel like a real threat - so it just leaves you feeling annoyed to read about it, like it's over emphasized for the sake of melodrama. The same goes for Bast and Hel's relationship. It's like reading about two moody teenagers, not two grown adults. Despite their bond, there is zero intelligent communication between them, just a lot of sulking and moaning and groaning about how much it sucks. The characterization for pretty much every character just regressed for no reason, until they're like a two dimensional version of who they were in the first book, without any of the charm. To put it in a nutshell, everyone in this book started behaving like characters, not people. So much of it was just over the top and felt ridiculous.
As I mentioned above, I was only about 30% of the way into the book before I really had the urge to chuck it against the wall because I couldn't stomach one more description of how much they really, REALLY wanted each other and could feel each other hurting and on and on and on. It really was starting to feel like the type of angsty fanfiction I read and wrote in middle school and high school - relevant because I expect better from adult relationships featuring adult characters supposedly taking on life or death matters. This review might read as overly harsh, but as someone who wrote a lot of quite popular but ultimately pretty awful works early on in my life, I think the frank reviews helped me improve. The really frustrating thing is that I know this can be better, because I've read better before. Otherwise I would've have bothered to write a review.
Sure, the first book was not the most original of concepts - to put it diplomatically - especially with the heavily Kate Daniels inspired background and the whole big bad Daddy dearest looking to kill the threat to his power - but it was actually executed well and the stakes and revelations not only matched, but actually surpassed, my expectations. This second was so underwhelming that I don't think I'll be continuing with this series....more
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