News: book-reviews: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Book 6 in the Were-Hunter Series or book 28 in the connected Hunters series (Dark, Were & Dream Hunters)

Until I read and reviewed Acheron I had had no real interest in this series, but after finishing Acheron I promised myself I would go back and read the others and did so not long ago (and it was a fantastic fest of hunters!). I was hooked, although in some of the books I think it was more for a glimpse of Simi, my all time favourite character in this series, than anything else. But as a whole I found the books to be filled with action, romance, a good story and more importantly for me characters that drove the books forward because of the depth of their pain, caring or sheer force of personality. I can’t say the same for this one. I won’t say I hated it because I didn’t (well not entirely).

This book tells the story of Fang (Vane and Fury’s brother) and Aimee (the only daughter of clan Peltier), characters we have met in a number of other books. Fang is a wolf and Aimee a bear, there love is forbidden on many levels not least being that they are different animals to each other.

The book was sadly a confusing mess of past stories, that weren’t even rehashed just glossed over. For me the major problem with this book was the fact that Ms Kenyon in her attempt to make this book fit with the others forgot to actually develop the story to this one, or actually really tell Fang and Aimee’s story other than with a few snippets here and there.

The time scale was vague with no clue as to what was going on in intervening months and was filled with so many ‘over the coming weeks’, ‘a few months passed’ or just an assumption of time passing as to make it confusing and bland. As an example Fang spends months having black outs and is accused of murdering numerous humans and hunters, this is covered in just a few short passages and the wonderfully articulate “over the next few months… ” Very little attempt is made to show where he has been, how he is feeling, how he was lived and perhaps more to the point how this has affected the woman he loves, or the brothers who remain loyal to him all of whom knew he was missing and suspected of being a murderer (Surely a wonderful opportunity for character development?). I have come to expect so much more from Ms Kenyon, and to be truthful if this was a new author I was reading, it would be the first and last time!

There was no character development in this book, in fact it failed to tell us anything about Fang except what we already knew in passing. There were some wonderful opportunities to develop an understanding of the motivations and emotions of both Fang and Aimee but they never materialised. In fact Fang (and even Vane) seemed to have undertaken a personality transplant with no explanation except that a few weeks had passed…well what happened in these weeks to make him change to a lovey dovey love sick puppy from the belligerent, smart mouthed wolf we knew and loved? And are we really expected to believe that Vane just wiped his hands of his brother when he came out of his coma all hurt and angry over his perceived abandonment?

It was clear that there was an assumption that we have all read the previous books and so back story could be skipped, but this resulted for me at least, in a story that was confusing and felt only half written. I am sorry but I cannot recommend this book, and would go so far as to say skip it if not for the fact that we meet yet more new characters and get a tiny hint of yet another possible hunter group about to make an appearance …I hazard that this will be the Demon (not daimon) Hunter spin off.

This series is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success, there are too many factions, interacting reoccurring characters and spin offs to make it comfortable reading. You almost have to sit there with your computer open to Ms Kenyon’s web site re-hashing who did what, with whom and in what order …in fact with this book I did that on a number of occasions…which does not make for good reading regardless of the other issues I had with it.

Lets just hope this was a blip on the horizon and not a taste of whats to come!

Tazallie