Cara was an investment banker and her main problems in
life were a misogynist boss she hated and the fact her love life consisted of
dreaming of Kai, her married best friend.
Then she received an odd letter from her grandmother. It
opens a world of vast wealth, a whole new home – and angels. Angels and
Nephilim and gifted humans whose job it is to prevent the long banished fallen
angels, the demons, from wreaking havoc on Earth. She has been called to serve
as one of these gifted people and is part of a sacred prophecy, the first of
the 12, leading up to an epic battle for the very sake of humanity.
And she meets Simon – sexy, suave, rich, sophisticated
and secretly her Guardian in disguise – and forbidden to her.
Oh, I am torn over this book. Well, kind of.
On the one hand, I am fascinated with the concept and
world of this book. The Trinities, the three supernatural agents, each with
their own niche (which I’m not sure of) and powers (which I have a rough idea
of but not entirely) and role, all focused on a centre stone who is important
(in some ill-defined way which may be different for each Trinity, though I’m
not sure if every trinity has a centre stone?). The ability to gain insights
into this future by examining the stones (something I didn’t entirely
understand but got the gist of) is a wonderfully teaser way of driving the
story. The constraints of free will (which I think they broke a few times but
could use more explaining) makes for a nice little twist in both motivation and
limits. Then there’s the unaffiliated Nephilim and the Seeker families that
both suggest a wider world, activity and involvement beyond the Trinities (but
this isn’t expanded upon leaving much up for grabs)
And, of course, there’s a prophecy. I know, I know, clichéd
but a good prophecy always adds power and texture to a nice apocalyptic story –
and this, with its prophecy of 12 possible chosen ones (chosen for what, why
and how I do not know) suggests a nice, long, slow build to an epic finale. On
top of that we have a huge, ill-defined history full of ill-defined factions
that may or may not be relevant today.
The world has so much in it that I want to explore every
part of it- because I can feel there is so much here. And all this world
building has been presented in a way that makes me interested, which is impressive
and speaks volumes for the world since it was presented in a series of
info-dumping (albeit, it doesn’t reflect so positively on the writing).
The dog’s also special somehow. I kind of gave up expecting
answers by then.
And the problem? Well, if you look above you can probably
guess my problem – everything is vague and unfinished – the characters didn’t
ask nearly enough questions to fill in the gaps, and they were questions that
should have been asked and would have been asked. For most of the book I
actually thought Cara was
the Centre Stone of the Trinity (we’re talking the last 20% when I realised I
was wrong). Everything is suggested but nothing is defined!
So what do we have instead. Romance. And a romance that just made so little sense to me and had some belated and (surprise surprise) ill-defined woo-woo taped on top of it to justify it.
First, let’s take our protagonist Cara. She is single
when she starts the book but unlike so many Paranormal Romances, this breaks
the mould by not having her be “Gently Used” or only had unsatisfactory
relationships in the past. She had a wonderful relationship with Kai. 7 years
ago. She now obsess about this relationship, dreams about him and waits
hopefully for the day he will come back to her – he’s her best friend, is married
and has a small child, but she’s still living in hope. More than slightly
creepy desperation isn’t a good look on anyone.
But then in come Simon/Chamuel. He’s the Nephilim of the
Trinity and, of course, there’s a rule that says members of the same Trinity
shall not have wild monkey sex. Because Reasons. Naturally, with such a rule,
Simon takes one look at Cara and falls head over heels in love, because she
trips once and he stops her falling. That’s it, thousands of years of
tradition, his own tragic history and a century of celibacy and a dire,
horrendous punishment are all banished by Cara and her clumsy tripping. Of
course, this causes lots of angsty conflict and Simon decides to address this
by dating Cara – and not telling her who she is. As the Nephilim Guardian he
spends all the time protecting her by hanging around invisible and then lying
to her so she doesn’t realise Simon-she-is-dating and
Chamuel-who-is-invisibly-watching-her-every-move are both the same person.
This guy is 200 years old and actually thought this was a
good idea.
This all leads to all kinds of angst, emotion and drama
llamas that manage to completely get in the way of the climactic battle but all
gets kind of sorted out when Cara apologises to Simon for… I have absolutely no
freaking clue. But she apologises for, I don’t know, being angry about the
lying/stalking/mission jeopardising/risking dire punishments thing?
There’s also a guy she decides to have breakfast with and
flirt with for… I have no idea, I suspect he’s a random insert from the next
book.
Riiiight. Moving swiftly on. Cara has 2 friends – Sienna,
her BFF who the Blissed Out Exposition Woman (her name is Constantina. All she
does is drop exposition and call everyone “dear one” in a kind of blissed out,
super-patient, patronising way that suggests she’s got her hands on the really
good weed) for reasons that are still unknown at the end of the book decides
simply must come along on the great advanture. And Michael, he’s another member
of the Trinity and his job is to… do… something. Communicate with angels,
apparently, but since Hippie Exposition Lady is an angel and has a mobile phone,
it seems a little redundant. Anyway, they both exist to hate each other for
REASONS, so we get endless pages of unnecessary childish bickering between
Sienna and Michael. As an added, oh-so-fun bonus, everyone assumes Michael is
gay because of gross and repeated stereotyping (he isn’t) and he decides this
is the worst insult in the world ever and hisses in rage every time someone
suggests he’s gay. Sienna, being the mature woman she is, calls him it as an
insult repeatedly. As an extra special bonus because there just wasn’t enough
homophobia, one of the other random Nephilim (they appear towards the end of
the book and are the first nod to racial diversity in the whole novel, they
have names. They’re Nephilim. Behold characterisation.) chides Sienna for “questioning
Michael’s manhood.” Lovely. In the face of this pretty constant, nasty
homophobia I’m pretty glad the author didn’t bother to include an actual LGBT
character.
Both Anna and Sienna suffer from Anxiety which could be
an interesting development of a disabled character. But it just seems to
manifest in two random panic attacks that are over quickly and swiftly ignored.
It’s almost like they were suddenly inserted than anything.
Also, this book ALMOST breaks the L.A. Banks record for the longest sex scene in history (though there is a lot of random talking through it and even a vision, I think) it goes on for 3 chapters.
So, in the end? In the end I’d still kind of like to know
what’s going on. There’s hints of a fascinating world here once we actually get
Constantina to wake up and describe it a little more, or for Cara to pay more
attention and not be so focused on her train wreck of a love life. On the world
and story, it could rank decently – but only if every single character were
taken out back and quietly (or noisily, I don’t mind) put out of my misery and
a whole new cast were imported to actually tell this story and experience the
world building
Alas, this didn’t happen and they all gathered together to do their utmost to annoy me.
