I am really at a loss here. This was recommended by someone that has similar tastes as mine. It's favorably reviewed on Amazon (granted, there are only 8 reviews, but they're still raving reviews). There's a sequel, too.
To put it bluntly, I got to page 51 and stopped. It was that bad. I just couldn't do it; I gave it the 50 pages that librarian Nancy Pearl recommends in "Book Lust", a true testament of how determined I was to read it. I was ready to put it down about 20 pages into it. And hopefully by now, my faithful followers, you know me well enough to know that it's highly unusual for me to not finish a book, even the ones I don't enjoy all that much.
The plot is a blatant rip-off of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. Or maybe it's meant to be an homage, I'm not sure. In any case, I've grown weary of Anita and her shenanigans, so I wasn't anxious to start down that road again. Add to that the poor writing and you've got a recipe for literary disaster. Even worse is that, much like LKH, there appears to have been a distinct lack of editing in this piece. There are run-on sentences as far as the eye can see, not to mention the overuse of commas. I wanted to grab a red pen and start marking the thing up! I can forgive/overlook a lot of things in a book, but bad editing is not one of them, not when it's so bad that I find myself stopping to "fix" the sentence structure in my head. Sigh.
Again, I can't tell you enough how disappointed I was with this book. I have no idea if it gets any better, and quite frankly, I just don't see myself ever going back to find out. I have no idea if the sequel is any good, either. This is definitely one that you'll have to decide for yourself. I'm sure there are those out there who will find it a good read. I'm just not one of them.
To put it bluntly, I got to page 51 and stopped. It was that bad. I just couldn't do it; I gave it the 50 pages that librarian Nancy Pearl recommends in "Book Lust", a true testament of how determined I was to read it. I was ready to put it down about 20 pages into it. And hopefully by now, my faithful followers, you know me well enough to know that it's highly unusual for me to not finish a book, even the ones I don't enjoy all that much.
The plot is a blatant rip-off of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. Or maybe it's meant to be an homage, I'm not sure. In any case, I've grown weary of Anita and her shenanigans, so I wasn't anxious to start down that road again. Add to that the poor writing and you've got a recipe for literary disaster. Even worse is that, much like LKH, there appears to have been a distinct lack of editing in this piece. There are run-on sentences as far as the eye can see, not to mention the overuse of commas. I wanted to grab a red pen and start marking the thing up! I can forgive/overlook a lot of things in a book, but bad editing is not one of them, not when it's so bad that I find myself stopping to "fix" the sentence structure in my head. Sigh.
Again, I can't tell you enough how disappointed I was with this book. I have no idea if it gets any better, and quite frankly, I just don't see myself ever going back to find out. I have no idea if the sequel is any good, either. This is definitely one that you'll have to decide for yourself. I'm sure there are those out there who will find it a good read. I'm just not one of them.
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