Urban Fantasy - Cat Adams - Blood Song (2010)

The short version of this review is that I really didn't like this.

You're staying for the long version? That's a lot of mettle.

Let us begin with the author. There is no person named Cat Adams that wrote this book. The name is an amalgamation of the two authors' names, C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Now, I understand collaborations. I understand using pen names. I understand simplifying it to one name. What I don't understand is why you would have a pen name when you just use your real names and your separate identities in your acknowledgements and author's note? I'm not talking about the copyright page. That's fine. But making it extremely clear that two of you wrote it without putting it on the cover of your book? Go to jail.

Next up, let's discuss the main character. Her name is Celia Graves. Graves. As in, where your coffin goes. And this is an urban fantasy involving a person being turned into a half-vampire abomination (that's even the technical term they use). Also, and I've only ever seen Charles de Lint avoid this trap, why are all urban fantasy heroines gun-toting, sarcastic, and slutty? It's like if the girl isn't feisty and has an arsenal under her coat, she's not interesting. In this case, the main character is a bodyguard against paranormal beings like vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and demons. Big fucking surprise. And she's haunted, a fact she doesn't mention until between a third and a half way in. I'll get back to this bitch.

The reason I didn't like it had nothing to do with vampires, okay? It's no secret that I loathe Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series. But that doesn't mean that all vampires suck (see what I did there?). Fat White Vampire Blues was great. But far too often does it fall into this trap of vampires are evil, vampires are sexy, vampires are awesome. And this book is no exception.

My main problem with the book is that it felt like it was written by two people, and that new ideas were added in haphazardly without a thought to changing the prior writing. This process is otherwise known as rewriting. The whole thing read like a first draft. Every time a new character or setting was introduced, the story would come to a full stop so that the main character could describe it in excruciating detail. I don't have a problem with description. This was badly handled. Intersperse your details in the action, and broad brush your initial description sections. Don't say a character has blue eyes. Say that they narrowed their blue eyes.

During the first half of the book, Celia is supposed to be chasing down her vampire "sire", and destroy him before he comes back to finish the job with her. At halfway through, the problem just goes away deus ex machina style, when a background character produces the guy's head in a bag. Then, it became this thing with another vampire completely, and it's still not mentioned why anyone should care.

After the climax of the book, Celia's grandmother pulls her aside and tell her that she is one-fourth siren, a creature that, up until now, we had no idea existed in this world. During the resolution, they are having a funeral for Celia's best friend. Some bitch comes in during eulogies and interrupts the whole thing by singing. When Celia calls her on it, she proclaims that she's some kind of siren princess, and that Celia was the one being rude.

So much effort is put into making Celia some kind of victim too. Sure, she's a bodyguard and all, but her sister is dead! She was kidnapped when she was little! She was half-turned into a vampire! She can't eat solid food! She upset some supernatural royalty and now has to have a fight to the death with her! It sounds more like these two authors were trying to shoehorn every idea they ever had into one book, and it just looks schizophrenic.

This would have all been solved if they had just done a little world-building. Holy symbols, water, and ground are harmful to most of these predatory creatures, but somehow not a lot of people go to church? Why not? And if the existence of these creatures is well known, why aren't more precautions beyond "hire a guy" taken?

All in all, it was terrible. Would not suggest you buy it, let alone read it.

2.0/10

Franchise Fiction - James Wyatt - Dragon Forge (2009)

I did say that I had started reading the next book in this series already. I finished it yesterday, but since I've recently posted here about the book before this one, there isn't too much to be said. Much of what I said before is still true.

That being said, there was a few more parts I didn't like and a few more parts that I did. For one thing, it turns out that the changeling is a member of the Royal Eyes. That makes him a lot less interesting now, because the Royal Eyes commonly use changelings as spies. But the fact that he didn't spend as much time doing spy work made up for it. Instead, he befriended a bunch of misfit warriors and traveled into the Demon Wastes, which I though was cool. The Labyrinth stuff was awesome, and Vor was the greatest character they had in the stable. An orc paladin that used to guard the Wastes and who let a pregnant human go because she was carrying his child? More of that, please! And of course he had to kill him off. Because nobody can really be interesting.

Something I didn't like was the whole marital issues between Gaven and Rienne. I am not reading your parts about going to Argonnessen because I want to hear about how Rienne thinks Gaven is self-absorbed. I don't give two fucks. Get to the being slaughtered by dragons, please. And this book in particular tries to hard to make Gaven special. Sure, he's the Storm Dragon, but I don't see what that had to do with their abomination machine.

Though, to be fair, I didn't understand how their abomination machine was supposed to work. In attempts to keep the whole thing cloaked in mysticism, Wyatt leaves the reader in the dark about the thing the damn book was named after. I still couldn't tell you what it was supposed to do.

I do appreciate, for reals though, the budding romance between Cart and Ashara. A warforged and a member of the house that built the warforged? That's the kind of shit that I crave. But watch, the next book will start with Ashara contracting a fast-acting disease called spear-to-the-face, just like everyone else with any interesting qualities.

Finally, these people don't know what dragonborn and eladrin are? What? Have they never been to Q'barra? What about hearing about the feyspires? These are kind of a big deal. If you know what a tiefling is, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't recognize a dragonborn or eladrin when you see them, you guys. I thought you were all well-traveled and shit. :P

4.5/10