Month: September 2013

Thornhill (Hemlock #02) by Kathleen Peacock Review

Thornhill_Jkt_des3Thornhill is the second book in the Hemlock series and it was an enjoyable sequel to the first book, Hemlock. It picks up pretty much immediately after the events of Hemlock and maintains a decent pace throughout the book. There are some rough patches but they are few and far in between so thankfully it doesn’t drag too much.

At the end of the previous book, Kyle leaves his hometown of Hemlock to protect his friend, Jason and girlfriend, Mac. In Thornhill, Mac and Jason go to Denver to look for him and to try and convince him to come back with them. Another friend of theirs, Serena, also joins them. In their search for Kyle they run into one of the local packs, and find Kyle with them. There isn’t much time for a happy reunion. Trackers raid the pack’s home and almost everyone is apprehended and taken to a detention facility called Thornhill. They lose track of Jason immediately but considering that he had joined Trackers earlier and has a tattoo to prove it, they aren’t too worried. The facility is meant only for werewolves but Mac manages to get in. Once inside, they are separated from Serena under the pretext that the Warden wants to question her further. Kyle and Mac soon realise that something is not quite right at this facility. Werewolves disappear overnight without any explanation.

Thornhill wasn’t as gripping as the previous book and I also found it a little hard get back into this world. That’s one huge drawback of having to wait too long for the forthcoming installments. There is a possibility of the reader losing interest. Thankfully it didn’t happen with this book (although it did happen with another series). The good thing about Thornhill is that Mac, Jason and Serena found Kyle fairly early in the book. The narrative also took it’s own sweet time to pick up but once they enter Thornhill, the pace picks up quite a bit, plus there’s always the looming threat of something truly horrible happening in that place, so that keeps the reader hooked.

Most of the characters from the previous book are here and there are a few additions. Of the old lot, Mac, Jason, Serena and Kyle are present (obviously) as well as Amy. I don’t remember the previous book very clearly but this time around, I preferred Jason to Kyle. At least Jason has personality; Kyle was boring and uninteresting. There was also no spirit in Mac. I vaguely remember her having more spunk. She’s still brave and willing to put her life on the line for the people she cares about but there was little or no spark. Amy is still a little creepy, though I guess that’s warranted considering she’s dead. In the new bunch, we have Eve, Curtis, Dex and Warden Sinclair. That’s the other problem with this book; it wasn’t too big on character development. I vaguely cared about Eve but even though she features fairly heavily in the book, she didn’t really create an impression. It was the same with the others. With the exception of Sinclair. She was truly hateful and a seriously revolting character. As far as villains go, I like the ones that are out and out bad, there is no soppy sad story that tries and explains why they do the horrible things they do. And if there is, they don’t use it as an excuse. Sinclair was awful because she was convinced that she was doing the right thing, that she was helping these werewolves by ill-treating them and hurting them. I wanted to acquaint her head with a crowbar on multiple occasions.

Thornhill was a bit of a let-down considering that I had been looking forward to it quite a bit. But it was also not as bad as it could’ve been. There are no dull relationship woes or annoying and completely avoidable misunderstandings, a decent heroine, a truly evil and delusional villain and decent secondary characters, it is worth reading at least once.

Consume (The Clann #03) by Melissa Darnell Review

ConsumeI found myself strangely underwhelmed by this book. It was the final book in The Clann Series and should have ended with a bang, instead, it kinda just sputtered at the end.

The previous book ended with Savannah turning Tristan into a vampire to save his life. Consume starts with the two of them and Savannah’s father staying in a remote cottage so Tristan can learn how to deal with the urge to drink human blood. After a few months and with an in-control Tristan, they head back to their town. But before they can get comfortable, all hell breaks lose, Tristan’s mother dies and Mr. Williams (Dylan’s father) becomes Clann leader who soon declares war on the vampires.

There is so much that could’ve been done with this part of the story. Tristan, Savannah, her father and her mother along with Emily are on the run for most of this book and in itself wasn’t a bad thing except NOTHING happened. For long stretches in Consume, there was absolutely no progress except silly and petty confrontations. It was hard to believe that the Clann and the Vampires were actually at war because there was nothing war-like happening. For most of their journey they remained unmolested. The only time they got into trouble when they had to go close to their hometown because they needed to restock their blood supply.

Tristan and Savannah were also dull and boring. I can’t even be bothered to write more about them. Emily was annoying (there were times when I wanted to kill her) Savannah’s mother seemed like a silly woman who had a very thin grip on reality, Sav’s father was marginally better though not by much.

Consume was a very sad end to a fairly decent series. Talk about a lame finale!

Origin (Lux #4) by Jennifer L. Armentrout Review

ORIGIN-500px-finalI am finally done and it was a lukewarm experience at best.

I had high hopes for Origin and sadly the book did not live up to them. Origin seemed a little disjointed to me, like the author wasn’t sure how she wanted the story to progress. Be warned, there will be spoilers below.

Origin begins where Opal left off, with Katy in the clutches of Daedalus while Daemon, Dawson and Beth managing to escape. As Daedalus’ captive Katy is subjected to a bunch of physical, medical and psychological tests, she is basically their resident guinea pig. We are introduced to some new characters, though only one of them, Archer, is of any significance. Plus we also finally meet Nancy, who pretty much runs the facility along with General Dasher. While at Daedalus, Katy learns that perhaps all that she thought of the Luxens was not completely accurate, apparently evil Luxens do exist (surprise surprise!)

On the other side, Daemon is busy rampaging in his search for Katy. He finally gets help from Luc who tells Daemon where Katy is being held and agrees to help them for a price. Daemon’s big plan is to turn himself over to the DOD and then improvise (great plan genius.) On his capture, he demands that they let him see Katy. They eventually do take him to Katy and this is where the book pretty much fizzled out. The minute Daemon entered the facility, I felt there was a definite drop in tension (and no, growling and glowering at other characters is not the kind of tension I’m talking about) They finally escaped Daedalus with Archer’s help (turns out he was working with Luc, no surprise there) and make a run for it.

The other thing that really bothered me was that Katy went through some traumatic shit, but the minute Daemon showed up, it was almost as if she suddenly got over everything she had been through. Sure, there were moments of uncontrollable sobbing but very often they seemed as if they were an afterthought. If you read just last quarter of the book, you’d think her stay with Daedalus was more like a picnic than a painful, torturous experience.

There was little to no character development here and if you really look at it, the story didn’t progress much either. The events of this book could have easily been incorporated into the fifth and final book making for a much tighter and precise storytelling. I thought that in Origin, we would get to a kick-ass avatar of Katy and she would finally come into her powers and be awesome, even that did not happen. For all that talk of her being able to handle things on her own, she was woefully out of her league.

There were some death, most notably Blake’s, and I have never been happier about a character’s death. Sadly Ash and Andrew also met their end and while I didn’t particularly care much for Andrew, i will miss Ash. She was a fun character. But I also felt that their deaths were a little too convenient. Here were two characters who had never been fans of Katy and it would’ve been interesting to see their interaction.

Now, on to more irritants in the book, Beth is pregnant. She’s eighteen for crying out loud!! There is something so wrong with that.. Besides, they are running for their lives, how the hell are they gonna look after a baby when they can barely take care of themselves. Also, Daemon and Katy get married. Did we seriously need teen pregnancies and teen marriage to give this story more weight? I don’t think so.

So basically all my high hopes for this book have been smashed into smithereens.. I need to read something better NOW!!!