Wicked Series by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie
I'm a pretty understanding person, I like to think. I understand some minor flaws. I get that YA novels aren't really supposed to be more than an enjoyable little nugget for *gasp* young adults rather than epic pieces of literature. I get that sometimes people forget to put a comma or decide that the sentence flows better without. I can deal with that.
But when you basically just throw shit down on paper and call it a book, you have lost your mind.
This series is god awful. (And I realize that someone somewhere is thinking No way, that's my favorite YA ever! right now, so. This can only be my opinion on the matter.)
It's like they didn't even have an editor. I kept seeing so many stupid mistakes that my English professors would smack me upside the head for. Punctuation was a joke; they apparently have no idea what a comma is. Sentence structure was plain and boring, and the sentences read as long rambles because of it. I literally saw at least two separate incidents where the wrong name was used, throwing me completely for a loop. And these were instances where it was extremely important not to get the names wrong.
For instance, the last little piece of Spellbound mentions that Holly sacrificed Bast, her cat and familiar. Except that she didn't. She sacrificed Hecate, Nicole's cat, specifically because she couldn't imagine sacrificing Bast.
Toward the middle of either Legacy or Spellbound, Nicole is trapped in Avalon, a super secret magical island. And suddenly her name pops up alongside the others of her coven. Holly, Amanda, Tommy and Nicole went and did something. Except it should have been Holly, Amanda, Tommy and Richard, because they were the only four present at the time. And, get this, they were talking not a page before about how they were supposed to save Nicole. If memory serves, that's actually what they were heading off to do.
Somewhere in there, Eli and Jer's mother's hair goes from silver in Holly's dream/astral projection to red when they finally meet.
Tante Cecile is either Silvana's mother or aunt. The authors cannot decide, so they called her both. Yeah. That made for a pretty messed up family tree in my head.
Someone should have lost a job because of this sloppy editing work. It's like the book hit that person's desk, and they couldn't find it in their soul to give a shit.
A good quarter of the last three books consist of mixtures between ancient French, Latin, and various other languages. Characters magically knew these languages. Literally, the book consistently stated "suchandsuch knew they were speaking ancient French, but they didn't know how. It must be magic." I started to think of it like a Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercial. OMG! I can't believe it's not natural! You can't be serious!
Not to mention that the use of the other languages was terrible. They'd speak the language, then translate it the next sentence. Example (pardon the Google translator): Ma chérie, vous êtes la personne la plus incroyable que j'ai jamais rencontré. Je veux mourir dans tes bras et probablement faire des bébés. My darling, you are the most amazing person I have ever met. I want to die in your arms and probably make babies.
Just like that. I said something in French. Now I'm saying it again, every single piece of it, in English. I know it's a device that some authors employ to keep readers from having to break out the Google translator, but it is extremely annoying to me. If the person understands French, speak French (or say they're speaking French and actually type English words). If they understand English, speak English. You don't have to do both.
Insert Here: Stalking of Love Interest a la Twilight, Just Add Water Instant Love and Everything Explained by Ancient Ancestors. Oh yeah. It was pretty bad.
Then, there's the fact that the stories consistently have 3-5 plots going on at the same time, making it very hard to follow. Maybe some of you are great with that sort of thing, but I almost had to break out a notebook just to keep track of where everyone was, how they got there, with whom and why.
You know, the worst part for me was that some of the characters could have been good. The main character, Holly, while annoyingly having insta-power, was flawed. When she became the High Priestess of her coven, she became a darker, angrier character with interesting dimensions. I understood why she changed under the weight of responsibility, and I appreciated that she realized that there was not true White Magic or Black Magic but, instead, shades of gray (though the authors did suddenly turn her into a wuss who wanted so badly to be pure as snow again).
Nicole, terrified by what was happening around her, ran away, was kidnapped, and tried to escape by herself, clearly progressing from a shallow little girl to a brave, clever woman (who the authors then turned into a sweet, mothering character when she was suddenly very, very pregnant due to a change in history. Yeah, it made about that much sense in the book, too.).
Tante Cecile and Silvana were both smart and empathetic people that I enjoyed reading about ( and then they f@#$ing killed them both). None of the girls needed a man to make them strong women, even if it kind of started out that way. They realized that they were strong by themselves.
I also appreciated that the authors weren't afraid to kill characters that the reader had become emotionally attached to, rather than just the token annoying characters that you just KNEW were going to die from the second they spoke. They didn't tiptoe around the very real danger that would exist for everyone involved. There were times where I legitimately believed that even the main-main character, Holly, might die. I liked that uncertainty.
But the good, as you can see, is far outweighed by the bad. There is a third book to this series, Resurrection, that I will not be reading. I really just want a good supernatural love story. Why can't I have a deliciously interesting supernatural love story, bookfails ? Why?