books, part one of a series
First books read in 2008:
The Serpent Prince, by Elizabeth Hoyt. Historical romance. A country lass finds a man in the road, naked and unconscious. Brings him back to her father's house. Turns out he's an urbane Viscount with a dark secret.
Hoyt writes beautifully. Her prose, her dialogue, her characters, the environment. She has a real mastery of craft I find extremely satisfying. That said, I was disappointed with this one. The hero's darkness / revenge plot was weak and not organic to his character, when it desperately needed to be. And there was pretty much nothing standing in the way of these two getting together and making a go of it. I want my romances to have plausible, emotionally-charged challenges standing in the way of a HEA (happily ever after, if you're not familiar with the acronym). The conflict and tension in this one only worked because the writing was strong, not because the story was. I far preferred her first in this series, The Raven Prince (my main complaint with that one was that there was too much focus on sex! good sex, well done sex, but not all that much plot otherwise). I want to check out the middle novel, The Leopard Prince, see how Hoyt does with that one. She's also coming out with a contemporary romantic suspense this month under the name Julia Harper; it'll be interesting to see how she pulls off that genre.
Working For the Devil, by Lilith Saintcrow. Urban Fantasy (or paranormal romance? more the former, I think). Futuristic. Dante Valentine is a necromancer: she raises the dead and lets them talk to the living. Kind of like Ned in Pushing Daisies, only more work involved. The Devil (yes, him) wants to hire her for a job that apparently only she can do cuz she's mighty talented an' stuff. (I have little patience for the Main-Character-as-Da-Bestest-Evah syndrome even though I understand the plot-related need for it here.) He assigns her her very own personal demon, named Japhrimel. She's very bitchy to him but he likes her anyway.
Lots of things happen and it's very exciting and yeah, I really didn't fall in love with this book. In fact, I skimmed large portions of it. I wanted to like it. I liked a lot about it. But the style grated and the main character was just so angry, I wanted to slap her. I think it's an authorial cop-out. Want tension in a scene? Make your character walk in pissed-off, whether or not it makes sense for the situation. Voila, instant tension. Pfft. It also suffers from repeated epiphany syndrome, wherein the character realizes something about herself or someone else but forgets it, only to realize it all over again. (Think: Veronica Mars, Season 3.)
All that said, I took Book 2 (Dead Man Rising, I think?) out of the library. Mostly because Book 1 ends with a mighty big cliffhanger and I wanted to see the resolution. Saintcrow has a wonderful imagination and her world building is good (though I wish she didn't feel the need to tell us so much about it; it stops the action dead), but her writing isn't smooth enough or complex enough to keep me interested in the series beyond this next book.
Onward.
The Serpent Prince, by Elizabeth Hoyt. Historical romance. A country lass finds a man in the road, naked and unconscious. Brings him back to her father's house. Turns out he's an urbane Viscount with a dark secret.
Hoyt writes beautifully. Her prose, her dialogue, her characters, the environment. She has a real mastery of craft I find extremely satisfying. That said, I was disappointed with this one. The hero's darkness / revenge plot was weak and not organic to his character, when it desperately needed to be. And there was pretty much nothing standing in the way of these two getting together and making a go of it. I want my romances to have plausible, emotionally-charged challenges standing in the way of a HEA (happily ever after, if you're not familiar with the acronym). The conflict and tension in this one only worked because the writing was strong, not because the story was. I far preferred her first in this series, The Raven Prince (my main complaint with that one was that there was too much focus on sex! good sex, well done sex, but not all that much plot otherwise). I want to check out the middle novel, The Leopard Prince, see how Hoyt does with that one. She's also coming out with a contemporary romantic suspense this month under the name Julia Harper; it'll be interesting to see how she pulls off that genre.
Working For the Devil, by Lilith Saintcrow. Urban Fantasy (or paranormal romance? more the former, I think). Futuristic. Dante Valentine is a necromancer: she raises the dead and lets them talk to the living. Kind of like Ned in Pushing Daisies, only more work involved. The Devil (yes, him) wants to hire her for a job that apparently only she can do cuz she's mighty talented an' stuff. (I have little patience for the Main-Character-as-Da-Bestest-Evah syndrome even though I understand the plot-related need for it here.) He assigns her her very own personal demon, named Japhrimel. She's very bitchy to him but he likes her anyway.
Lots of things happen and it's very exciting and yeah, I really didn't fall in love with this book. In fact, I skimmed large portions of it. I wanted to like it. I liked a lot about it. But the style grated and the main character was just so angry, I wanted to slap her. I think it's an authorial cop-out. Want tension in a scene? Make your character walk in pissed-off, whether or not it makes sense for the situation. Voila, instant tension. Pfft. It also suffers from repeated epiphany syndrome, wherein the character realizes something about herself or someone else but forgets it, only to realize it all over again. (Think: Veronica Mars, Season 3.)
All that said, I took Book 2 (Dead Man Rising, I think?) out of the library. Mostly because Book 1 ends with a mighty big cliffhanger and I wanted to see the resolution. Saintcrow has a wonderful imagination and her world building is good (though I wish she didn't feel the need to tell us so much about it; it stops the action dead), but her writing isn't smooth enough or complex enough to keep me interested in the series beyond this next book.
Onward.