Author: Michelle Madow
Publisher: Dreamscape Publishing
Length: 266 pages
Source: Review Copy From Author
She thought magic didn’t exist. She was so, so wrong.
Raven Danvers is a typical college student… until she’s attacked by a demon on the night of her twenty-first birthday. Luckily, she’s saved by Noah—a mysterious, sexy wolf shifter who appears and disappears in the blink of an eye.
When Raven returns home, she discovers her mom has been abducted by the same demon who came after her. And who turns up at the scene of the crime again? Noah. He’s hunting the demons who are taking humans, and he’s ultimately heading to the place where Raven needs to go to save her mom—the mystical island of Avalon.
Now Raven’s tagging along on Noah’s demon hunting mission whether he wants her there or not. And he makes it no secret that his journey would be a lot easier without her dragging him down. But Raven isn’t going anywhere, so she and Noah will have to learn to work together—if they don’t kill each other first.
Review:
Protagonists: Really, this section should be called Protagonist, as Raven's POV chapters take up nearly 90% of this book, I did the math, and worst of all after chapter fourteen it's only Raven's POV until the final chapter, but we'll get to that later. It isn't like I hate Raven, I don't, I like her no-nonsense, straightforward personality and she's a great character to read from, especially if you're new to The Dark World Saga, but at the same time, one of the selling points for me was getting to see more Noah who I was really intrigued by during the Vampire Wish season. We do get to see a lot of Noah, as not only does he have a few chapters in this book, but he's Raven's main love interest, but I really wish we got to see more from his POV as this is technically his series too and it would have shaken things up more after it became all Raven all the time.
Romance: Going into this story I was a bit skeptical about the romance of this series, but I was optimistic since I really want to see Noah end up happy (can you tell which character I favor?). Raven is a fantastic counterpart to Noah and I really like their dynamic together. While we don't get too much development towards a relationship between these two, the situation they're in, in regards to their feelings, is very exciting and I can't wait to see how it will progress in future installments.
World Building: So, this is totally and completely a setup book, in fact, I'll go one step farther and say that this really felt like only half of a book. Much like the second book of The Vampire Wish season, this installment felt like a whole lot of setup and zero actual pay off. I mean, it's called The Angel Trials and there aren't any actual Angels or Nephilim in this book. With this being the first book in the series, and since the author is usually very quick and turning out new installments, It's not a HUGE problem, but with how excited I was for this book I was hoping the story would develop further. I did really enjoy the additional world building in this story, most of the world building is a retread of what we learn in The Vampire Wish season, but there's a lot of new stuff about shifters that are revealed in this story that I was practically captivated by. Oh, and let's not forget a cameo appearance from one of my favorite characters, Rosella, which, I won't say how she's involved, but I nearly exploded with joy from seeing her return.
Predictability: I mean look, this book isn't that hard to figure out. While it's definitely an enjoyable adventure, or partial adventure, there isn't all much that I felt was surprising because honestly, I can only think of a couple of twists in this book at most, and they weren't all that hard to figure out. Since this book has so much set up in it, I'm sure the next installment with have a lot more twists and turns, but this book just sort of felt rather unsurprising. Scratch, that, there were two twists in this book that caught me off guard, but they were more detail based and came in the final chapter so I'll talk about that then.
Ending: Much like some of the books in The Vampire Wish season, this book ends with a new POV, who narrates the last chapter, and boy is this chapter a doozy, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before that final chapter, we have a final climax... sort of. Honestly, the final climax of this book, while interesting, wasn't much of a final climax since it more felt like a climactic moment in the middle of a book rather than the end of one. The final chapter though, that was pretty interesting, while I figured out the gist of what was going on before this chapter, the specifics are really interesting and while it's not the same as a cliffhanger, I am left wanting more.
Rating:
When I read this book I couldn't help but draw parallels to The Vampire Prince, which I had a lot of the same problems with, but this is a promising start, and while there's really only set up in this story, at least it didn't feel like filler like The Vampire Prince nearly did.
No comments:
Post a Comment