Mike and Dez, vampire and half-demon, are just pursuing a
relationship together after a long period of friendship; confronting the fear
that everything may irrevocably change between them.
But a far greater fear is stalking the world – a demon
has managed to breach the barrier between worlds and seeks the stone that will
allow him to open the doors wide and bring his forces across the great divide.
Mike and Dez, joined by Mike’s heart broken brother, Lucas and backed by the
council of witch and vampire covens race to catch the demon and stop him before
it’s too late.
First of all, this book is a short story/novella start to
a new series and, I have to say, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
The first book in a series is your hook, your bait. It’s
the tasty morsel of joy you hang in front of me that lures me into the series
and makes me look for book 2. It has to drag me in, it has to get me invested
in the series and want to see the story continue.
Which means it has to develop some decent characters. It
has to showcase a brand new world. It has to show off your writing style to the
best possible extent. It has to establish a story, both interesting enough to
make this book good and with sufficient points left open to make the next book
necessary so I have a reason to stay with the series
All of that is a tall order in a full length book. In a
novella it’s nearly impossible.
And I don’t think this book really achieved any of these.
The world has vampire, witches and demons. The witches
and vampires are organised into covens and the demons want to do bad things because,
well, they’re demons, it’s what they do. And that’s kind of it. I don’t know
the why of anything, how these things interacts, how the magic works – I know
there was a war deep back in history but that’s about it. I don’t even know how
old the principle characters are beyond “very”. The world is hollow, the world
is generic, the organisations that make up the world – the covens, the record
keeper, the guardians – they’re all just words. This becomes especially glaring
when the guardians seem to be utterly incapable of actually guarding anything.
The characters – well the most developed characters two
me were introduced in the prologue, their personality, their relationship,
their feelings are more real than anyone else’s – and they become pretty irrelevant
once the prologue is done.
The main characters, Deziree and Michael feel much more
shallow. Michael has one element – attraction to Dez. In fact, their whole
romance is an unnecessary distraction, in this short book, from the actual
end-of-the-world plot that is supposed to be their main attention. Michael
feels almost… distracted by the end of the world. Especially since that’s
pretty much all we have on Michael – he’s a mercenary (totally unexplained what
that means and who for) who was called in for REASONS and he loves Dez, that’s
it
Now move to Dez and we do know a lot more about her –
she’s a thief and a bar owner and we know her position on a range of topics –
because Dez doesn’t have issues, she has entire compilation volumes. Dez has
mother issues over her dead, raped mother. She has daddy issues that come to
the fore. She has issues over falling in love and immortality (or at least
longevity). She has issues with her adoptive mother. She has issues with loving
Michael. She has issues with her own demon blood and what that means for her.
And NONE of them are developed. How could they be? The
book is far too short to deal with what could easily be 3 or 4 books worth of
inspiration. The romance just smoothes out – except the ending where Dez does
something that I don’t even remotely understand. She is deeply betrayed, but so
little is made of the connection – or Dez’s emotional investment – that it’s a
complete non-issue. She fears becoming evil and then the issue goes away. She
has issues and they disappear – they never get actually developed or resolved
satisfactorily.
Then there’s the story – we demon grabbed the Macguffin and now must be
stopped before bad things happen. It’s clumsy, it’s linear and it’s dull. The
demons just leap frogs from guardian to guardian – these guardians that do
absolutely nothing and are completely undeserving of their title (one of them
actually writes a note saying “something is coming for me” in ominous tones.
Seriously, the guardian’s reaction to his psychic power picking up a looming
threat is to write HIMSELF a note. Did he think he’d forget? Or did he worry
that his death scene wouldn’t look sufficiently ominous?), while Mike and Dez
follow with the conveniently appearing power for Dez. Side issues are, as
mentioned, completely undeveloped. The ending involving Lucas was bleeding
obvious from about half way through the book. And confronting the big bad
involved such a convoluted confession I checked the book to make sure Agatha
Christie’s ghost wasn’t writing it. Unless your protagonist talks about their
little grey cells, there’s no excuse for confronting the bad guy with flimsy,
to no evidence and then having a dramatic villainous confession just
info-dumped on us. And the only reason they confront the big bad is that they
decide there’s a traitor in their midst because… because… actually I have no
idea.
There was no twists, no action, no development and the
story was just an elaborate game of follow the leader.
And the writing? It’s stilted, we have a lot of very
abrupt staccato sentences, lots of short sharp lines. Maybe it’s me being the
utter abuser of the run on sentence but it feels choppy – often with
unnecessary detail squeezed in (like the engine seize of Michael’s Aston
Martin. Things like:
“The night club was packed. The main parking lot was full
and there was a line out the door. Luckily, the place was trendy enough that
they had valet service. “
It then describes how the paid the valet, how much he
paid the valet, how he threatened the valet to keep his car safe, followed by
them going into the club, the seat they chose, why they chose those seats, the
drinks they ordered… all in this choppy
style and unnecessary detail for a story this short. We also have lines like
this:
“Thinking of their date inspired happiness in him.”
Oooookay, that actually feels like an English-as-a-second
language problem, but I don’t think it is.
Top this off with zero diversity, no minorities at all
and no character is developed enough for me to comment on “strong” female
characters either – except to say we have a thread of rape running through the
book
And in the end what hooks am I left with? The story
ended. The demon was defeated, the bad guy caught. Dez has a case of angst that
I’m sure she’ll get over… so what now? There’s no open end, there’s no
unresolved issues, there’s no reason for me to pick up book 2 – because it all
ended.
All in all, not the best book I’ve read, I have to say.
